Oscar Predictions 2026: What Will Win This Year

We’re gonna be brutally honest. It’s a lot more fun to delve into Oscar season when we’re not taken aback by how…good the nominations are? Unlike in years past, where the Oscar nominees—and, more pointedly, the movies and performances snubbed—helped paint a picture of what’s gone wrong in the industry, this year’s Oscar race seems to portend a path forward that should satisfy the monoculture and cinephiles alike.

Not only is Hollywood well represented by the four-course meals of One Battle After Another and Sinners, and not only are indies keeping things weird with the likes of Bugonia and Marty Supreme, newer voters are clearly committed to making sure that it’s the international film festival circuit that’s the true “For Your Consideration” zone of interest, not the trades, and that the best picture slate and the best international feature roster have more in common than not.

Lest one think that sounds a death knell for the middlebrow, behold those F1 nominations. If this is what the old world dying and the new one struggling to be born looks like, count us entertained. For this year, at least. Eric Henderson

Best Picture

Bugonia
F1
Frankenstein
Hamnet
Marty Supreme
WINNER: One Battle After Another
The Secret Agent
Sentimental Value
Sinners
Train Dreams

For the first time in a long time, the best picture race feels like a legitimate death match between two equally appealing options. On the one hand, we have in One Battle After Another a true unicorn: a nine-figure budget Hollywood studio production that taps directly into the zeitgeist, proudly takes on the mess of our current political reality by standing in resolute opposition to everything the nation’s current power-holders stand for, is unabashedly aimed at adults, and also delivers the thrilling goods as a mass entertainment. On the other hand, we have in Sinners an arguably bigger rarity: a nine-figure budget Hollywood studio production that connects the zeitgeist directly into marginalized communities’ shared history, proudly takes the on the mess of our current political reality by showing how it has always triumphed through splintering said communities, is unabashedly aimed at the four quadrants, delivers the thrilling goods as a mass entertainment, and engages in world-building without leaning on existing IP.

And both are hits, at least by whatever yardstick we’re using circa 2026. That both came from Warner Bros. in that studio’s most existential moment yet only makes this call that much harder. Sinners has indeed overperformed almost everyone’s expectations (we still need to keep reminding ourselves that its 16 nominations blow away the Oscar record originally set 76 years ago with All About Eve’s 14 nods), but there’s no denying the long string of guild awards and critics’ laurels that One Battle After Another has racked up over the course of the last three months, its momentum seemingly unflaggable.

While Sinners is undoubtedly riding the same wave of populism that lifted CODA and Everything Everywhere All at Once across the finish line, we’re sticking with PTA’s guarded, cross-generational optimism finding purchase in this midterm year. Henderson

Best Director

Chloé Zhao, Hamnet
Josh Safdie, Marty Supreme
WINNER: Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another
Joachim Trier, Sentimental Value
Ryan Coogler, Sinners

The race for best picture may no longer be a slam dunk, but this one certainly is. Sinners has connected more with general audiences, but Paul Thomas Anderson’s defiant humanism, so bracingly wedded to One Battle After Another’s screwball action comedy, turned his latest into the water-cooler movie of the year. So, yes, the film benefits from its parallels to our current situation, but that wouldn’t mean as much if Anderson didn’t spin them into a sense of hope. It doesn’t hurt that the director is among the most-nominated individuals without an Oscar win, and it’s impossible to imagine the academy letting that slight go uncorrected this year. Gonzalez

Best Actor

Timothée Chalamet, Marty Supreme
Leonardo DiCaprio, One Battle After Another
Ethan Hawke, Blue Moon
WINNER: Michael B. Jordan, Sinners
Wagner Moura, The Secret Agent

If indeed Michael B. Jordan does end up following his galvanizing SAG Actor Awards win with one at the Oscars, it may well go down in the history books as one of those head-smackingly obvious inevitabilities, much like Jack Nicholson winning for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest or Marlon Brando for The Godfather. The amount of love in that ballroom when Jordan upset Timothée Chalamet wasn’t just palpable, it was uncontainable (at least for Viola Davis). And while we’ve fallen victim to letting SAG-AFTRA enthusiasm guide our final Oscar call as recently as last year (Demi Moore), it’s also important to remember that the number one argument in Chalamet’s corner when it comes to whether it’s “his time” for Oscar glory has been his box office stamina. Jordan not only matches Timmy’s B.O. mojo, he may even exceed it by this point; he certainly outranks the rat king in swag. Add to that a litany of Oscar-race pluses—he’s an industry workhorse, he plays two roles, he’s the headliner of a best picture frontrunner, he handled the BAFTA snafu with unflappable grace, and seemingly no one personally dislikes him—and it sure seems like Smoke and Stack have Marty Supreme’s number. Henderson

Best Actress

WINNER: Jessie Buckley, Hamnet
Rose Byrne, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
Kate Hudson, Song Sung Blue
Renate Reinsve, Sentimental Value
Emma Stone, Bugonia

This is the only acting category whose winner has seemed preordained—perhaps boringly hardened into a kind of received wisdom—since the start of the awards season. Yes, Rose Byrne has put up a mighty fight, nearly sweeping the critics prizes and winning the Golden Globe for best actress in a comedy or musical. But Jessie Buckley won the Globe for best actress in a drama, as well as best actress at the Critics Choice, the BAFTAs, and the SAG Actor Awards. And as no actress has failed to win an Oscar after performing that particular hat trick, the odds are overwhelmingly in Buckley’s favor. Gonzalez

Best Supporting Actor

Benicio Del Toro, One Battle After Another
Jacob Elordi, Frankenstein
Delroy Lindo, Sinners
WINNER: Sean Penn, One Battle After Another
Stellan Skarsgard, Sentimental Value

It should come as a surprise to no one if Delroy Lindo is among the first winners announced on Oscar night. Lindo was the face of Sinners at the SAG Actor Awards when the film won the ensemble trophy, and it isn’t unreasonable to believe that he stands to benefit from the BAFTA fiasco. But standing in the way of Lindo’s “Marcia Gay Harden” moment is Sean Penn, whose role in One Battle After Another is close to 10 times as dominant in his film compared to Lindo’s. The intentional bigness of Penn’s performance is practically all that everyone was talking about upon the release of Paul Thomas Anderson’s film, and the actor’s victories at the BAFTAs and SAG Actor Awards tell us that it isn’t nearly as divisive among those in the industry as it is among critics. Gonzalez

Best Supporting Actress

Elle Fanning, Sentimental Value
Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Sentimental Value
WINNER: Amy Madigan, Weapons
Wunmi Mosaku, Sinners
Teyana Taylor, One Battle After Another

While there’s no doubt that supporting actress is as up in the air as the other two acting categories that don’t involve Jessie Buckley, the case for Amy Madigan’s scene-stealing Aunt Gladys has been quietly firming up over the course of the awards season, which began with her decisive win at the New York Film Critics Circle and struck paydirt earlier this month at the Actor Awards, in which she delivered a gracious, endearingly eccentric acceptance speech. And while British powerhouse Wunmi Mosaku’s win at the BAFTAs (where Madigan wasn’t nominated) gives us a bit of pause, the consensus this season has been that the award was Teyana Taylor’s to lose. By our estimation, the scale-tipping factor in play here is strictly functional. Whereas Taylor’s character dominates the first half-hour of her film, she disappears completely thereafter. Mosaku similarly doesn’t make it to the final reel. In contrast, Madigan shows up in the back half of her film, grabs audiences by the ears and never lets go. It’s still a three-way race, but we’re going with the closer. Henderson

Best Original Screenplay

Blue Moon
It Was Just an Accident
Marty Supreme
Sentimental Value
WINNER: Sinners

At one point or another during awards season, every film in this category that isn’t Sinners had a reasonable path to victory. Thematically, Marty Supreme and Sentimental Value are closer in spirit to the films that typically win in this category. At the same time, the spoils here, especially in the absence of a conceptually driven nominee (think Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Her), typically go to the best picture nominee with the most mojo. Horror doesn’t have a great track record at the Oscars, but every so often, a film like Sinners elevates itself to the level of cultural juggernaut and Oscar voters are only too happy to shed their genre biases. Gonzalez

Best Adapted Screenplay

Bugonia
Frankenstein
Hamnet
WINNER: One Battle After Another
Train Dreams

A quick shout-out to former Last Week Tonight and Succession writer Will Tracy for imbuing Bugonia with some of the most unnervingly accurate neologisms of our enshittified present era. Of all the screenplays up for awards this year, his work—a mashup of Save the Green Planet’s millennial anxiety with the living-dead dread of knowing that “late-stage capitalism” is but a symptom of “late-stage Holocene”—is one of the two most flagrantly conceptual coups. The other, of course, is Paul Thomas Anderson’s second (and unambiguously far more successful) crack at updating Pynchon’s sensibilities for the screen. There was never any doubt here, but the closer Sinners has been inching toward upsetting One Battle After Another higher up on the ballot, the more obvious it’s been that this category has a clear imperative to deliver a long-overdue Oscar into PTA’s hands. Henderson

Best International Feature

The Secret Agent
It Was Just an Accident
WINNER: Sentimental Value
Sirāt
The Voice of Hind Rajab

Prior to the Oscar nominations being announced, we saw this as The Secret Agent’s to lose. Kleber Mendonça Filho’s latest won the international trophy at the Globes, and while it’s certainly timelier than Sentimental Value, Joachim Trier’s film enters Oscar night with nine nominations, which speaks to its more wide-ranging appeal. Gonzalez

Best Documentary Feature

The Alabama Solution
Come See Me in the Good Light
Cutting Through Rocks
Mr. Nobody Against Putin
WINNER: The Perfect Neighbor

This is one of the strongest slates that this category has seen in some time, meaning that any film here would be a worthy winner. After Geeta Gandbhir’s searing The Perfect Neighbor won the top documentary award from the Critics Choice Association, some wondered if it was destined—like seven of the past nine winners of that award—to not even be nominated at the Oscars. But when it was, it cemented its frontrunner status. Gonzalez

Best Animated Feature

Arco
Elio
WINNER: KPop Demon Hunters
Little Amélie or the Character of Rain
Zootopia 2

Zootopia 2 may have made close to two billion dollars at the international box office, but you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone that thinks it has a bigger cultural footprint than KPop Demon Hunters. Netflix made an impressive $18 million from a special two-day screening event in North America last August, right when “Golden” was sitting at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and if the streamer had kept the film in theaters, there’s no doubt that it would have ended 2025 as one of the highest-grossing films of the year. Gonzalez

Best Cinematography

Frankenstein
Marty Supreme
One Battle After Another
WINNER: Sinners
Train Dreams

This is the only visual craft category where Frankstein probably stands no chance of winning. In fact, given the widespread complaints about it having the same—some say cheap—look as so many Netflix original productions, I imagine some are surprised it even snagged a nomination here. Train Dreams, which is only distributed by Netflix, has drawn understandable comparisons to the work of Terrence Malick, and it’s the only film with a reasonable shot of taking this from Sinners. Autumn Durald Arkapaw is the first female cinematographer to shoot a feature in the 65mm IMAX format, and what she does with light and shadow is sure to be studied in film schools for years to come. It also doesn’t hurt that she would be the first female cinematographer to win in this category. Gonzalez

Best Costume Design

Avatar: Fire and Ash
WINNER: Frankenstein
Hamnet
Marty Supreme
Sinners

It’s difficult to imagine Frankstein’s gob-smacking garbs—near extensions of the film’s production design—losing in this category. Gonzalez

Best Documentary Short

WINNER: “All the Empty Rooms”
“Armed Only With a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud”
“Children No More: Were and Are Gone”
“The Devil Is Busy”
“Perfectly a Strangeness”

Paul Thomas Anderson may not be the only person who wins more than one trophy on Oscar night. If he isn’t, it’s because Geeta Gandbhir stands a reasonable chance of winning in her two categories. Her “The Devil Is Busy,” co-directed by Christalyn Hampton, focuses on the nerve-shredding day-to-day measures that the head of security at a women’s healthcare clinic in Atlanta must take in order to protect patients seeking more than just abortions. Narratively taut and thematically controlled, it’s the strongest short in the category, but it faces stiff competition from the more nakedly emotional “Armed Only with a Camera,” a stirring tribute to the work of U.S. journalist and filmmaker Brent Renaud, and “All the Empty Rooms,” about journalist Steve Hartman’s project to document the empty bedrooms of children killed in school shootings. It’s a close one, but we give the edge to the latter, given that Netflix has a good track record of winning in this category. Gonzalez

Best Film Editing

F1
Marty Supreme
WINNER: One Battle After Another
Sentimental Value
Sinners

As much as pundits seem convinced that F1 is a stealth contender here, and as much as it feels counterintuitive to place a bet on the movie that boasts the longest running time in the lineup, and as much as the traditional Oscar wisdom that best editing goes hand in hand with best picture has been disproven in recent decades far more often than it’s borne out…watch the razor precision of that climactic car chase in One Battle After Another again and tell us it doesn’t lay utter waste to F1’s endless two and a half hours of hollow vroom-vrooms. Henderson

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

WINNER: Frankenstein
Kokuho
Sinners
The Smashing Machine
The Ugly Stepsister

Guillermo del Toro’s maximalist-to-the-extreme Frankstein is set to run the table among Oscar’s visual craft categories like Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things did a few years ago. It’s up against some pretty stellar competition, but subtlety hardly prevails here. Gonzalez

Best Original Score

Bugonia
Frankenstein
Hamnet
One Battle After Another
WINNER: Sinners

Hard to imagine any voters being unaware that the most galvanizing cue from Hamnet was Max Richter’s pre-existing “On the Nature of Daylight,” especially since it’s already shown up in prior best picture nominee Arrival. That aside, there’s no reason not to see this as a showdown (again) between the two dominant best picture players. And though Jonny Greenwood is clearly overdue for Oscar recognition, and his idiosyncratic cues are arguably a key ingredient in keeping the breathtaking pace of One Battle After Another from flagging, the centrality of music as a thematic, make that pedagogic concern throughout Sinners all but ensures Ludwig Göransson will secure his third Oscar win in less than a decade. Henderson

Best Original Song

“Dear Me,” Diane Warren: Relentless
WINNER: “Golden,” KPop Demon Hunters
“I Lied to You,” Sinners
“Sweet Dreams of Joy,” Viva Verdi!
“Train Dreams,” Train Dreams

Probably the most notable thing about best song this year, aside from what a slam-dunk free space it is in Oscar pools everywhere, is how the titles of the songs that Diane Warren didn’t pen can be reorganized to taunt the now 17-time nominee’s “Golden” “Dreams of Joy” being, yet again, dashed with a summary “I Lied to You” from the Academy. And how “Dear Me” sounds like the opening refrain for a particularly embittered entry from her Oscar diary. If it seems like I’m grasping at straws here, well, imagine how desperate Diane Warren must feel by this point. Henderson

Best Production Design

WINNER: Frankenstein
Hamnet
Marty Supreme
One Battle After Another
Sinners

When it comes to the below-the-line categories, voters tend to gravitate toward the films that lean into a more-is-moreness ethos, and Frankstein’s decorousness is practically on another stratosphere. In fact, the film makes Guillermo del Toro’s past two winners in this category, Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water, appear austere by comparison. Gonzalez

Best Animated Short

WINNER: “Butterfly”
“Forevergreen”
“The Girl Who Cried Pearls”
“Retirement Plan”
“The Three Sisters”

Of the three short film categories, the best animated short is frequently the toughest to nail down, partly because it often comes down to deciding whether voters will respond to craft or opt for theme. No such issues this year. While “The Girl Who Cried Pearls” boasts some first-class stop-motion character design, and we’re sure a few lost souls will manage to link the junk food-addicted bear from “Forevergreen” to R.F.K.’s post-roadkill feast fever dreams, “Butterfly,” a gorgeously hand-painted tribute to Holocaust survivor and Olympic swimmer Alfred Nakache, has this field beat in both form and content. Henderson

Best Live Action Short

WINNER: “Butcher’s Stain”
“A Friend of Dorothy”
“Jane Austen’s Period Drama”
“The Singers”
“Two People Exchanging Saliva”

On the flip side, this category feels like a genuine four- or five-way tossup, so much so that we’re tempted to just turn our prediction here, much like the decisions being made inside the Pentagon, over to the betting markets. Kalshi and Polymarket both see this one going to the aggressively French “Two People Exchanging Saliva,” but there’s no reason to believe anyone operating in those corners of the internet has actually watched any of these nominees and are, more likely, opting for the title most likely to titillate incels spending their parents’ money.

Their closest runner-up, “The Singers,” is the best effort of the lot, a Netflix-backed approximation of what Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets’s empathetic portrait of America’s used-up and forgotten souls might look like with a post-Trump song in its heart. “A Friend of Dorothy,” in which talents no less formidable than Miriam Margolyes and Stephen Fry are soundly defeated by the ethos of Hallmark cinema, boasts star power and tastefully discreet pro-LGBTQ and pro-artist positions, and “Jane Austen’s Period Drama” flatters its audience’s (justifiable) belief that the only good men out there are the ones to be found in 200-year-old literature.

Snarky larks have carried the day many times before, which gives most of those aforementioned titles a shot, but we’re leaning toward the topicality and currency of “Butcher’s Stain,” a keenly pitched and empathetic portrait of the insidious ways the Israeli-Palestinian conflict poisons every individual it touches, and boasts this category’s canniest punchline of them all. Henderson

Best Sound

F1
Frankenstein
One Battle After Another
WINNER: Sinners
Sirāt

A win for Sirāt would carry the baton for The Zone of Interest’s heartening triumph over Oppenheimer, yet another strike in favor of the internationalization of the AMPAS voting body. It’s specifically that win, and those new voters, that keep us from joining the herd calling this F1’s to lose. If those two poles represent the “too cool” and “too square” options in our Goldilocks metaphor, then the fire and music of Sinners should be “just right.” Henderson

Visual Effects

WINNER: Avatar: Fire and Ash
F1
Jurassic World Rebirth
The Lost Bus
Sinners

James Cameron has the distinction of being the director with the most films rewarded in this category. He should have no problem extending his lead with another one here for Avatar: Fire and Ash, but with fatigue for his franchise having settled in, there’s wiggle room for the more beloved Sinners or F1 to pull an upset. Gonzalez

Casting

Hamnet
Marty Supreme
One Battle After Another
The Secret Agent
WINNER: Sinners

Only time will tell if this new Oscar category proves itself to be a distinct and separate entity from the Actor Awards’s best cast award, but at least for this inaugural year, all signs seem pointed toward smooth sailing for Sinners to triumph here, and deservedly so. Henderson