2026 Oscar Nomination Predictions

The mood at last week’s Golden Globes was almost surrealistically lovey-dovey. It’s hard to say whether the gathered crowd had conceded that their time picking political battles as the default cultural gatekeepers had passed—even as they cheered the trophies handed to Paul Thomas Anderson’s proudly anti-fascist One Battle After Another—or whether they were in “circle the wagons” mode amid an impossibly robust selection of international contenders. All of this set against an almost existential backdrop of corporate mergers and acquisitions.

Either way, one senses that this year’s Oscar race will carry on the confusion and cognitive dissonance, with the two most likely top nomination-getters—One Battle After Another and Sinners—both proving that nine-figure Hollywood budgets can still yield world-building ingenuity, at the same time as they find new ways to reassert cosmopolitan, lefty ideals from the ashes of woke. As for the rest? Well, as the reaction to the very 1998-ish Hamnet’s surprise Globe win over the very 2025-ish Sinners goes to show, the battles are just heating up.

Best Picture

Even by its own standards, Neon left nothing to chance when it came to this year’s Cannes lineup. While the festival’s preeminent position as an international tastemaker has dovetailed inexorably into the AMPAS’s own goal of creating a truly globalist-minded voting body, this year seems engineered to serve as a stress test for just how much foreign influence can determine the shape of this race. Put another way, the roster of possibilities this year is such that Yorgos Lanthimos’s merciless Bugonia may well represent the middlebrow median, at least in the sense that Oscar voters have notably settled into lauding the Greek’s freaky brand in prior heats.

More bluntly, is it really possible that Oscar will manage to keep old-school studio bloc-voting from pushing Avatar: Fire and Ash and F1 (to say nothing of Netflix’s latest “This Had Oscar Buzz” fodder Jay Kelly and A House of Dynamite) past the clear enthusiasm that the critical and cinephile community has for Cannes-tested, Neon-approved titles like Sentimental Value, The Secret Agent, No Other Choice, Sirāt, and the Palme-winning It Was Just an Accident?

While it’s tempting to posit this year as another 1996, in which only Jerry Maguire managed to prevent a full-blown Hollywood studio shutout, it sure feels like we should expect a roster that reflects our forever-polarized reality and future. Half-vanguard but half-trad—half-international but half-provincial. And if that means that there probably isn’t quite enough room for the surprisingly widely longlisted Sirāt and No Other Choice, we’re also gonna brightside that by saying that there’s also pretty clearly not enough slots for Wicked: For Good. Small favors.

Will Be Nominated: Bugonia; Frankenstein; Hamnet; It Was Just an Accident; Marty Supreme; One Battle After Another; The Secret Agent; Sentimental Value; Sinners; Train Dreams

Closest Runners-Up: No Other Choice; Sirāt; Weapons; Wicked: For Good

Best Director

Now this is a category where the international demolition derby is more likely to wind up racking up more casualties on the Neon side. Yes, the whole concept of vote-splitting is frequently one of Oscar prognosticators’ deepest-held pipe dreams, but if you’re looking at who the “gimmes” are here, it looks increasingly like Neon’s going to be left fighting for the scraps.

The DGA quintet includes Paul Thomas Anderson, Ryan Coogler, Josh Safdie, Chloe Zhao, and Guillermo del Toro. We’re tempted to go along with that as Oscar’s likely lineup, especially since the other guild precursors are in the tank for Frankenstein and del Toro is an ever-endearing spokesperson for the inherent nobility of pop craft. But the Academy’s directors branch has also proven more willing than most to advance tougher, less compromising auteurs past, say, Greta Gerwig. And given arguably the top international story during the entire Academy voting period was the uprisings in Iran, and given Jafar Panahi’s narrative of political resistance takes a back seat to no one’s, we’re sticking our necks out for him over the cuddlier alternatives.

Will Be Nominated: Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another; Ryan Coogler, Sinners; Jafar Panahi, It Was Just an Accident; Josh Safdie, Marty Supreme; Chloe Zhao, Hamnet

Closest Runners-Up: Guillermo Del Toro, Frankenstein; Kleber Mendonca Filho, The Secret Agent; Oliver Laxe, Sirāt; Park Chan-wook, No Other Choice; Joaquim Trier, Sentimental Value

Best Actress

We’ll get to why this category is almost certainly a coronation for Jessie Buckley’s actorly prostrations in Hamnet, rather than Rose Byrne’s endlessly inventive meltdowns in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, later this season. Suffice it to say they’re both in, and it feels extremely likely that Renate Reinsve will get her overdue plaudits after just barely missing out for The Worst Person in the World several years ago, and at this point there’s really no reason to ever scratch Emma Stone off the list when she’s working with Yorgos Lanthimos.

Chase Infiniti is probably the cuspiest of all of One Battle After Another’s likely five acting nominations, even with the star-is-born, “and introducing” mojo in her corner. But really, what’s left to fill in the gap if she doesn’t make it?

We’d feel a lot better about handing that slot over to Song Sung Blue’s Kate Hudson if she’d managed to win the Golden Globe, since the musical-comedy categories used to be engineered for triumphs of that sort. Instead, we’re going to give Eva Victor her obligatory namecheck as the Andrea Riseborough of this year’s race, secure in the knowledge that, as of yet, Riseborough is still the only one who’s actually managed to pull off that sort of word-of-mouth nod.

Will Be Nominated: Jessie Buckley, Hamnet; Rose Byrne, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You; Chase Infiniti, One Battle After Another; Renate Reinsve, Sentimental Value; Emma Stone, Bugonia

Closest Runners-Up: Amanda Seyfried, The Testament of Ann Lee; Eva Victor, Sorry, Baby

Best Actor

Much like last year, where there were at most six truly viable candidates by the time the nominations rolled around, this race feels pretty much down to four locks and then settling whether Ethan Hawke can ride the critical acclaim for his idiosyncratic portrait of Lorenz Hart in the otherwise largely ignored Blue Moon, or whether Jesse Plemons can turn join his co-star for what will go down as one of the more unusual lead category duos in recent memory. Why did Focus Features push Paul Mescal into supporting this year again?

Will Be Nominated: Timothée Chalamet, Marty Supreme; Leonardo DiCaprio, One Battle After Another; Michael B. Jordan, Sinners; Wagner Moura, The Secret Agent; Jesse Plemons, Bugonia

Closest Runners-Up: Joel Edgerton, Train Dreams; Ethan Hawke, Blue Moon

Best Supporting Actress

We’ll know something has gone wrong with Sinners’s overall chances if Wunmi Mosaku doesn’t make it in here, as she’s among the few viable candidates not competing against a co-star. And among the two most notable other hopefuls who are in a lane of their own in their films, sorry to Ariana Grande, but it’s clearly Amy Madigan’s Aunt Gladys that gave the gays life last year.

That leaves six actresses from three films fighting for the other three slots. We agree with SAG that Odessa A’Zion (whose volatile work in HBO’s I Love LA really bolsters her case) and Teyana Taylor are pretty far ahead of their respective co-stars Gwyneth Paltrow (Marty Supreme) and Regina Hall (One Battle After Another). As for the SAG-ignored Sentimental Value, some say it’s a close call. Others will take that Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas has racked up twice as many citations in the year-end awards blitz as Elle Fanning has.

Will Be Nominated: Odessa A’Zion, Marty Supreme; Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Sentimental Value; Amy Madigan, Weapons; Wunmi Mosaku, Sinners; Teyana Taylor, One Battle After Another

Closest Runners-Up: Elle Fanning, Sentimental Value; Ariana Grande, Wicked: For Good; Gwyneth Paltrow, Marty Supreme

Best Supporting Actor

Conversely, this category feels like ground zero for why One Battle After Another will lead in nominations and Sinners will have to likely settle for second place. Because even though most of the major critics’ organizations broke for Benicio del Toro over Sean Penn, the overall count once the flyover states’ nominations started rolling in evened up the score, and there hasn’t been a major heat where one missed out at the expense of the other. They’re both hard in the paint.

On the flip side, Delroy Lindo’s seemingly slam-dunk credentials (a veteran long overdue for a career tribute nod who also happens to have a juicy, memorable role in an Oscar powerhouse) have taken a back seat to the surprising enthusiasm for his costar, newcomer Miles Caton, who landed the SAG nod over Lindo. Hard to know whether to be more upset that those two are both facing an uphill battle against One Battle After Another here, or that Stellan Skarsgård isn’t going to wind up donning BDSM gear on Oscar’s red carpet alongside his son Alexander.

Will Be Nominated: Benicio Del Toro, One Battle After Another; Jacob Elordi, Frankenstein; Paul Mescal, Hamnet; Sean Penn, One Battle After Another; Stellan Skarsgård, Sentimental Value

Closest Runners-Up: Miles Caton, Sinners; Delroy Lindo, Sinners; Alexander Skarsgård, Pillion

Best Original Screenplay

We were about to muse that it’s never wise to bet on an Oscar slate that would get the “love it, no notes” seal of approval from the National Society of Film Critics, but then we checked back and realized that Robert Kaplow’s loquacious work on Blue Moon was actually first runner-up there. Ah well, goes to show there’s always room for improvement. Even in one of this rarest of rare potential pre-nomination contender slates that seems to boast…no potential Oscar villains?

Will Be Nominated: It Was Just an Accident; Marty Supreme; The Secret Agent; Sentimental Value; Sinners

Closest Runners-Up: Blue Moon; Sirāt; Sorry, Baby; Weapons

Best Adapted Screenplay

Oscar villains, did I say? Maybe a few here.

Will Be Nominated: Bugonia; Frankenstein; Hamnet; One Battle After Another; Train Dreams

Closest Runners-Up: No Other Choice; Nouvelle Vague; Wake Up Dead Man

Best International Feature

The only question here is which titles are most likely to torpedo Neon’s reasonable expectations to go five for five. Netflix is all in on Shih-Ching Tsou’s Left-Handed Girl, which has the added bonus of having been co-written by last year’s prom king Sean Baker. Amazon’s promotional push for the Argentinian abortion drama Belén has been fairly relentless, and it’s got topicality in its corner. But if you ask us, the furious, Tunisian-Palestinian The Voice of Hind Rajab seems by far the most likely to muscle its way into dashing Neon’s hopes to run the table.

Will Be Nominated: It Was Just an Accident; The Secret Agent; Sentimental Value; Sirāt; The Voice of Hind Rajab

Closest Runners-Up: Belén; Left-Handed Girl; No Other Choice

Best Documentary Feature

Another year, another set of conspicuous snubs among the longlisted contenders, among them Predators, BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions, and Orwell: 2+2 = 5. (Less surprising was the omission of Mariska Hargitay’s My Mother Jayne, given this branch’s traditional resistance toward retrospective showbiz portraits.) Otherwise, we see no reason not to expect the world’s crash course toward autocracy, endless war, social injustice, and human rights violations to dominate this field once again. If for that reason alone, we see Come See Me in the Good Light slipping in as the only real option for reprieve and healing. Leave it to the state of things circa 2026 to have us gleaning hope from an intimate portrait of terminal illness.

Will Be Nominated: Apocalypse in the Tropics; Come See Me in the Good Light; Cover-Up; The Perfect Neighbor; 2000 Meters to Andriivka

Closest Runners-Up: The Alabama Solution; Holding Liat; Mr. Nobody Against Putin; My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow