AGT Finale Vote: Season 21 Voting Closes at 7 a.m. ET, Winner Revealed at 9 p.m. ET
Both a deadline and a review point on the same day. The deadline is the vote closing at 7:00 a.m. ET on Wednesday 23 September 2026: after it, the how-to-vote sections stop being instructions and become a record of how the result was decided. The review point is the live results show at 9:00 p.m. ET that night. Once the winner is announced, rewrite this same slug as a results page: add the winner and any finishing order NBC announces, move everything to the past tense, confirm the show’s end time against NBC rather than TV Insider, and check whether the judging panel or the announced guest list changed on the night. No Season 22 voting dates had been announced when this was written.
Everything else on the page is unaffected; the figures below still say when they were read.
- 🔴 The America’s Got Talent Season 21 finale vote closes at 7:00 a.m. ET on Wednesday 23 September 2026. That is 4:00 a.m. PT, 3:00 a.m. in Alaska and 1:00 a.m. in Hawaii, the same moment everywhere, and it is the last vote of the season.
- 🔑 The $1 million winner is revealed on NBC’s live results show at 9:00 p.m. ET, 8:00 p.m. CT, on Wednesday 23 September 2026. KSI guest-judges in place of Simon Cowell, who NBC says is recovering from an operation.
- 🔑 The official limit is 10 votes per act, not 10 in total. NBC’s voting FAQ sets it per act, per email address or public TikTok account, per voting method, per window, and the Official Voting Rules set 10 per act separately for each method. NBC’s own NBC Insider articles describe 10 votes per method to split however you like, and that conflicts with the official rules.
- There were three ways to vote: the AGT app, NBC.com and, for the first time on AGT, TikTok. Voters had to be 18 or older and in the 50 states, DC or Puerto Rico. There is no text-message voting.
- The final is decided by viewers alone. NBC says this season has no Wild Cards and no Saves, and in the finale the judges give feedback only, with no Golden Buzzers and no power to eliminate.
- This page carries no betting odds, no favorites and no prediction of who wins.
The America’s Got Talent Season 21 finale vote closes at 7:00 a.m. ET on Wednesday 23 September 2026, and the $1 million winner is revealed on NBC’s live results show at 9:00 p.m. ET that night. It is the last vote of the season: before 7:00 a.m. ET you can still vote in the AGT app, at NBC.com or on TikTok, and after it nothing you send counts. The limit is 10 votes for each act, per method, not the 10 in total that some of NBC’s own articles describe.
When does AGT finale voting close?
At 7:00 a.m. ET on Wednesday 23 September 2026, which is the same instant in every US time zone. The window opened at 9:00 p.m. ET on Tuesday 22 September as Finale Night 1 began, and it is the only vote the finale has. Once it closes, no Season 21 voting remains.
The local times, from NBC’s Official Voting Rules:
| Zone | Opens Tue | Closes Wed |
|---|---|---|
| Eastern | 9:00 p.m. | 7:00 a.m. |
| Central | 8:00 p.m. | 6:00 a.m. |
| Mountain | 7:00 p.m. | 5:00 a.m. |
| Pacific and Arizona | 6:00 p.m. | 4:00 a.m. |
| Alaska | 5:00 p.m. | 3:00 a.m. |
| Hawaii | 3:00 p.m. | 1:00 a.m. |
| Puerto Rico | 9:00 p.m. | 7:00 a.m. |
Arizona, which skips daylight saving time, shares the Pacific clock in September, and Puerto Rico matches Eastern. The rules label Alaska time “AT”, the same abbreviation they use for Puerto Rico; the Alaska window is 5:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m.
If you are reading this after 7:00 a.m. ET, voting is over, and the how-to-vote sections below are the record of how tonight’s result was decided.
What time is the AGT winner announced?
On NBC’s live results show, Wednesday 23 September 2026 at 9:00 p.m. ET, 8:00 p.m. CT. Both finale nights run an hour later than the season’s usual 8/7c slot, and the winning act takes the $1 million prize.
TV Insider, syndicated by Yahoo on 21 September, reports that both finale nights end at 11:00 p.m. ET, 10:00 p.m. CT, after The Voice Season 30 at 8/7c. NBC gives only the start time, so the finish is reported, not confirmed. NBC also does not state the West Coast air time for the results show, so check your local listing.
To watch live, NBC’s 17 August explainer points to the NBC app with a TV-provider login, or Peacock Premium Plus. Episodes stream on Peacock the next day. Ignore the Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET line in NBC Insider’s How to Watch boxes; it is out of date for finale week.
Who is in the AGT Season 21 Top 10?
Ten acts reached the finale: Acro Canine Crew, Come Here, Geno Ploeger, Hundred Fingers, Lai Noelle, Nene Royal, Olivia Befus, Royal Lasers, Unitree and Veronika Goroshkova. They are listed alphabetically here, and the order implies nothing about votes.
| Act | Type | Golden Buzzer |
|---|---|---|
| Acro Canine Crew | Animal act | None |
| Come Here | Dance | None |
| Geno Ploeger | Magic | None |
| Hundred Fingers | Magic group | Howie Mandel, Quarterfinals; NBC does not name the round |
| Lai Noelle | Teen singer | Kenan Thompson as guest judge, Quarterfinals Round 3 |
| Nene Royal | Music, rock covers | Mel B, Quarterfinals Round 2 |
| Olivia Befus | Dog act | None |
| Royal Lasers | Laser dance | None |
| Unitree | Robots | Sofía Vergara, Quarterfinals Round 4 |
| Veronika Goroshkova | Aerial pole | None |
Four of the ten got through the Quarterfinals on a Live Golden Buzzer, the one power the judges held in the Live Shows, one per judge.
The road here started with 44 acts in the Live Shows at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium. Four Quarterfinal rounds, on 18 August, 25 August, 1 September and 8 September, produced 16 Semifinalists. The Semifinals aired on 15 September with results on 16 September, cutting the field to ten. None of the NBC pages we read spells out exactly how the 16 became 10.
How many times can you vote on AGT?
Up to 10 votes per act, per email address or public TikTok account, per voting method, per voting window. You can give every finalist 10 votes; it is not a pool of 10 to split between them. NBC’s voting FAQ says you can cast “up to ten (10) votes for each act”.
The Official Voting Rules set the same limit method by method: 10 votes per act per email address in the app, no more than 10 per act per email address counted online, and 10 comments per act per TikTok account, each per window.
NBC Insider, the network’s own editorial site, gets this wrong. Its finale article of 22 September says that in each method you can vote up to 10 times and spread those votes among the acts however you like, which means 10 in total per method. Its how-to-vote article, updated 25 August, says much the same. The official rules and FAQ are what govern the vote.
We deliberately do not add the methods up into a per-person total. The FAQ lists the app and NBC.com as separate methods with separate limits, but NBC does not say whether one NBCUniversal Profile used in both places gets two allotments, and the rules themselves warn that the limits may not be enforceable as written.
What are the ways to vote on AGT?
Three: the official America’s Got Talent app, the website at nbc.com/AGTVote, and TikTok, which AGT offered this season for the first time. There is no text-message voting in the rules. You must be 18 or older and located in the 50 states, Washington DC or Puerto Rico, and there is no fee beyond your normal internet and data charges.
| Method | Where | Limit |
|---|---|---|
| App | Official AGT app, from the App Store or Google Play | 10 per act, per email address |
| Web | nbc.com/AGTVote | 10 per act, per email address |
| TikTok | A comment on the official Vote Here post at @AGT, from a public account | 10 comments per act, per account |
The NBC.com address redirects to agt.vote.nbc.com, which is also where the official rules and FAQ live.
Voting online needs a free NBCUniversal Profile, which you can create with an email address, a Google account or an Apple ID; the sign-up asks for gender as a required field.
Most weeks the window ran from 8:00 p.m. ET Tuesday to 7:00 a.m. ET Wednesday; the finale’s opens an hour later because the show does. The exception was 8 September, Quarterfinals Round 4: a real-time vote from 8:00 to 10:05 p.m. ET, 7:05 p.m. PT, open only during the live Eastern and Central broadcast, with results the same night in a three-hour broadcast.
How does TikTok voting on AGT work?
You comment an act’s name on the official Vote Here post on the @AGT account, from a public TikTok account. Each comment is one vote for one act, up to 10 comments per act per account in the window, and comments anywhere else do not count.
A comment that names more than one act is invalid, so it is strictly one act per comment. You do not need the exact full name, whatever NBC Insider’s how-to guide implies: for the finale window the rules published accepted keywords for each act, including Acro K9 Crew, 100 Fingers and Uni Tree. NBC announced Lele Pons as the TikTok host for Tuesday’s show.
Can the judges save anyone in the AGT finale?
No. The finale is decided by the viewer vote alone. NBC says this season has no Wild Cards, no Saves and no other way for the judges to influence which acts go through, and in the finale the judges give feedback only, with no Golden Buzzers and no power to eliminate anyone.
There is no audience save either.
Why isn’t Simon Cowell judging the AGT finale?
NBC says Simon Cowell is recovering from an operation, as host Terry Crews announced in August. KSI is the guest judge for both finale nights, alongside Sofía Vergara, Howie Mandel and Mel B.
He is not the first stand-in. Kenan Thompson and Heidi Klum guest-judged earlier in the Live Shows, and Thompson’s Live Golden Buzzer is how Lai Noelle got through Quarterfinals Round 3. The season’s regular panel is Vergara, Mandel, Cowell and Mel B, with Crews as host.
Who is performing on the AGT results show?
NBC’s announced lineup for Wednesday has Josh Groban, Linkin Park, REI AMI, Chloe Flower and Steve Aoki performing. NBC published it on 22 September, before either finale night aired, so treat it as announced.
The same announcement adds AGT alumni Jessica Sanchez, the Season 20 winner, and Mat Franco; Olympian Sydney Levrone; and Trisha Paytas and Taylen Biggs as extra correspondents. For Tuesday’s performance night, NBC announced Bruce Buffer to open the show.
Who is going to win AGT 2026?
Nobody outside the count knows until the results show at 9:00 p.m. ET on 23 September 2026. The winner is decided by the viewer vote that closes at 7:00 a.m. ET, and this page does not carry betting odds, favorites, polls or predictions of any kind.
What should you do now?
- Before 7:00 a.m. ET: vote in the app, at nbc.com/AGTVote or on TikTok, up to 10 votes per act in each method. On TikTok, name one act per comment, on the official post only.
- After 7:00 a.m. ET: voting is closed. Watch the results live on NBC at 9:00 p.m. ET, 8:00 p.m. CT, or stream the episode on Peacock the next day.
- Outside the United States: you cannot vote. The vote site told us we were not eligible when we checked from abroad.
- Looking ahead: NBC has not announced Season 22 voting dates. Its schedule article says auditions for the 2027 season are open.
For another show where the viewer vote rather than the judges decided who went home, see our Dancing with the Stars week one eliminations .
How we verified this
The voting window and every time zone were checked against NBC’s Official Voting Rules and its voting FAQ at agt.vote.nbc.com, read at about 4:00 a.m. ET on 23 September 2026. The rules set the finale window at 9:00 p.m. ET Tuesday 22 September to 7:00 a.m. ET Wednesday 23 September and list the local times for each zone, stating that the times are local to wherever the voter lives. We converted each one independently with daylight saving time in effect: every zone opens at 01:00 UTC and closes at 11:00 UTC on 23 September, so the close really is simultaneous. ⚠️ The rules label Alaska time “AT”, the same abbreviation they use for Puerto Rico’s Atlantic Time. This page writes Alaska out in full rather than copying the label.
🔴 The vote limit was checked against three NBC sources that do not say the same thing, and an adversarial re-check corrected where our own research had sourced it. Our first pass attributed the per-method wording to the Official Voting Rules. The re-check read the rules in full and found that sections 1.1 to 1.3 set the limit per act, per email address or TikTok account, per window, method by method, but never use the phrase per voting method. That phrase appears in the FAQ (question V; the FAQ numbers its questions in Roman numerals), on the vote site’s How to Vote page and in the separate September 8 rules. The re-check also found that the NBC Insider sentence our research quoted had been trimmed in a way that changed its meaning: the full sentence begins with the words in each method, so the real conflict is 10 in total per method (NBC Insider) against 10 per act per method (the official materials). The page is written to that corrected version.
⚠️ One sentence in the Official Voting Rules is a drafting error, and we did not rely on it. The Online Voting section, 1.2, opens with a sentence about voting via the app, copied from section 1.1. We used the sentence that follows it, which says online votes above 10 per act per email address will not be counted, together with the FAQ.
⚠️ We give no per-person total because NBC does not supply one. The FAQ lists the app and NBC.com as separate methods with separate limits, but nothing describes whether one NBCUniversal Profile used in both places is counted as one allotment or two, and the rules warn that the limits may not be enforceable as written. Adding the methods together into a single number would be our inference, not NBC’s rule.
The Top 10 were checked against the vote site’s list of acts performing this week and NBC Insider’s Top 10 article of 17 September 2026. The Golden Buzzer attributions come from NBC Insider’s Top 10 article and its Quarterfinal results articles of 27 August, 3 September and 9 September. ⚠️ NBC says Hundred Fingers received Howie Mandel’s Golden Buzzer in the Quarterfinals without naming the round, and none of the NBC pages we read explains how the 16 Semifinalists were cut to 10. Both gaps are left as gaps.
Air times come from NBC; the end time does not. The 9/8c start for both finale nights is on NBC’s own pages and the vote site’s header. The 11 p.m. ET finish and The Voice in the 8/7c slot come only from TV Insider, syndicated by Yahoo on 21 September 2026, and are labelled as reported. ⚠️ NBC does not state the West Coast air time for Wednesday’s results show. The How to Watch box on NBC Insider articles still says Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET, which is stale boilerplate for the finale week and was ignored. One aggregator gives the performance night as Tuesday 23 September; 22 September 2026 is the Tuesday.
⚠️ We could not see the live vote page from inside the United States. Our check was made from outside the US, and the vote site told us we were not eligible, which matches its geographic rule but meant we could not confirm the in-window page or that voting opened on time on Tuesday night. NBC’s Help Center voting articles sat behind a bot challenge and were not read.
The guest list is NBC’s announcement, not a record of what aired. It comes from NBC Insider’s finale article published at 3:15 p.m. ET on 22 September 2026, before either finale night had gone out, and it is written here as announced.
🔴 This page contains no betting odds, spreads, prediction-market prices, favorite labels or win probabilities. None appeared in the Official Voting Rules, the FAQ, the How to Vote page, NBC’s show page or the five NBC Insider articles we read, and none has been added from anywhere else. The winner exists only after 9:00 p.m. ET on 23 September 2026.