Noah Wyle named People’s 2026 Sexiest Man Alive

Noah Wyle, the star of the medical drama The Pitt, has been named People magazine’s 2026 Sexiest Man Alive, the magazine announced Tuesday.

Wyle, 55, succeeds Jonathan Bailey, who held the title in 2025, according to reports from Variety, Good Morning America and NBC News. He becomes the latest actor from the medical drama ER to receive the honour, joining former co-star George Clooney, who was named in 1997.

Outlets including Today and WSB-TV reported that Wyle reacted with disbelief, saying the news sounded like a classic set-up for a prank. He also said his wife thinks he is a good guy, which is why he accepted, according to the reports.

The honour comes a month after Wyle won an Emmy Award for his work on The Pitt, the HBO Max series in which he plays Dr. Michael Robby Robinavitch, a veteran emergency physician. The show has been a critical hit and has given Wyle a second act in a career that began with the role of Dr. John Carter on ER, which ran on NBC from 1994 to 2009.

Wyle’s other credits include the TNT science-fiction series Falling Skies, the Librarians franchise and the 1999 television film Pirates of Silicon Valley, in which he played Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

People has named a Sexiest Man Alive every year since 1985, when Mel Gibson was the first. Past honourees include Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, Dwayne Johnson, Chris Hemsworth, Michael B. Jordan and Patrick Dempsey, whose selection in 2023 drew wide attention.

Searches for “noah wyle” and “sexiest man alive 2026” were trending in Canada on Tuesday, according to Google Trends, with more than 5,000 searches in the past day. Google lists the topic as active, and the search interest began about six hours before this story was published.

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Sources: Variety, Good Morning America, NBC News, Today and WSB-TV.