98th Academy Awards

• 1. Introduction

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  The 98th Academy Awards took place on the 15th of March 2026 at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences handed out Oscars in 24 categories for films released in 2025. Going in, one film carried a historic number of nominations. Coming out, a different film held the night's biggest prize. The ceremony also added a brand-new award and ran into several disputes. How did the film with the most nominations end up without the top prize? What was new about the way this year's Oscars were run? And did critics and television viewers agree on whether the night worked?

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• 2. A Record Sixteen

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  Sixteen nominations went to Sinners, more than any film has ever received in Oscar history. The old mark was fourteen, shared by All About Eve in 1950, Titanic in 1997 and La La Land in 2016. Actress Danielle Brooks and actor Lewis Pullman announced the nominees on the 22nd of January 2026 at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.

  Sinners set a second record the same morning. Ten Black individuals were nominated for work on that one film, more than for any other single film. Critics and journalists praised the breakthrough and applauded the Academy for embracing both Black cinema and the horror genre.

  The film's studio, Warner Bros. Pictures, earned thirty nominations across its slate, tying its own record from 2005. Behind Sinners in the count, One Battle After Another received thirteen nominations. Frankenstein, Marty Supreme and Sentimental Value each received nine.

  When the nominations came out, eight of the ten Best Picture nominees had earned nearly $750 million combined at the American and Canadian box office. Sinners led that group with $280 million. F1 came second with $189.6 million, and Marty Supreme followed with $80.6 million. Bugonia took in $17.7 million, Hamnet $15.3 million, Sentimental Value $4.3 million and The Secret Agent $2.6 million. Netflix refuses to release such figures, so no totals were available for Frankenstein or Train Dreams. That left One Battle After Another, at $71.6 million, in fourth place among the reported figures and far behind the leader.

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• 3. One Battle Takes Over

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  Six Oscars went to One Battle After Another, the biggest haul of the night, and one of them was Best Picture. Its producers were Adam Somner, Sara Murphy and Paul Thomas Anderson. Somner's name carried a rare distinction. He became only the second producer to win Best Picture posthumously, after Sam Zimbalist for Ben-Hur in 1959.

  Anderson also won Best Director. His screenplay, adapted from the Thomas Pynchon novel Vineland, took the adapted screenplay award. Sean Penn won Best Supporting Actor for playing Col. Steven J. Lockjaw, and Andy Jurgensen won for film editing. The sixth award came in the new casting category.

  Sinners collected four. Michael B. Jordan won Best Actor for his two roles as Elijah Smoke Moore and Elias Stack Moore. Ryan Coogler won for original screenplay, Ludwig Göransson for original score, and Autumn Durald Arkapaw for cinematography.

  Frankenstein won three. Tamara Deverell and Shane Vieau took production design, Mike Hill, Jordan Samuel and Cliona Furey took makeup and hairstyling, and Kate Hawley won for costume design. KPop Demon Hunters won two, for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song.

  Ten other titles won one award each. Jessie Buckley won Best Actress for Hamnet, and Amy Madigan won Best Supporting Actress for Weapons. F1 won for sound, and Avatar: Fire and Ash won for visual effects. Sentimental Value took Best International Feature, and Mr Nobody Against Putin took Best Documentary Feature. All the Empty Rooms won the documentary short award, and The Girl Who Cried Pearls won the animated short award. The live action short award was shared by The Singers and Two People Exchanging Saliva.

  Added up, Warner Bros. collected eleven Oscars: one for Weapons, four for Sinners and six for One Battle After Another. That total tied the record for wins by a studio in a single year.

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• 4. Firsts and Milestones

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  At the age of 30, Timothée Chalamet became the youngest actor to earn three acting nominations since Marlon Brando. He also became the youngest person nominated for both acting and producing in the same year, passing Warren Beatty. Wagner Moura was the first Brazilian nominated for Best Actor. Stellan Skarsgård became the first actor nominated for Best Supporting Actor in a non-English language international feature.

  Forty years separate Amy Madigan's nomination for Twice in a Lifetime in 1985 from her latest, for Weapons. No actress has gone longer between Oscar nominations. Ruth E. Carter earned her fifth nomination, for costume design, and became the most-nominated Black woman in any category.

  Chloé Zhao became the second woman, after Jane Campion, nominated twice for Best Director. She is also the first woman of color to do so, and the first woman to be nominated again after a previous win. Dede Gardner reached nine Best Picture nominations, the most for any female producer, breaking her tie with Kathleen Kennedy.

  Autumn Durald Arkapaw was already the fourth woman and the first woman of color nominated for cinematography. Then she won. She became the first woman, the first Black person and the first Filipino person to take that award.

  The winners' list carried its own firsts. Jordan's victory made him the second actor to win for a dual role, after Lee Marvin in Cat Ballou in 1965. Buckley became the first Irish actress to win Best Actress. Penn became the fourth male actor, and the eighth performer overall, to win a third acting Oscar. Coogler became the second Black filmmaker to win original screenplay, after Jordan Peele for Get Out in 2018.

  KPop Demon Hunters became the first animated film from outside Disney and Pixar to win two Oscars. Its song "Golden" became the first K-pop song to win Best Original Song. Sentimental Value was the first Norwegian submission to win Best International Feature.

  The live action short category ended in a tie between The Singers and Two People Exchanging Saliva. It was the seventh tie in Oscar history and the first since 2013.

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• 5. What Changed This Year

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  On the 8th of February 2024, the Academy announced a competitive award for casting directors. It is the first new Oscar category since Best Animated Feature in 2001. The Academy said at the time: "Casting directors play an essential role in filmmaking, and as the Academy evolves, we are proud to add casting to the disciplines that we recognize and celebrate."

  The Casting Directors Branch, which chooses the nominees, was founded in July 2013. It had nearly 160 members when the category was announced. The Academy had rejected a casting category once before, in 1999.

  In February 2026, four of the first five nominees spoke on a panel about the new award. Cassandra Kulukundis said, "I think it's kind of sad that it took that long." She added that people really don't understand what casting directors do. Francine Maisler, nominated for Sinners, said that being lifted up meant a lot to her and to the casting directors who came before.

  Kulukundis went on to win for One Battle After Another, becoming the category's first recipient. In her speech she thanked the Academy for adding the award, and she thanked the casting directors who fought tirelessly to make it happen. The other nominees were Nina Gold for Hamnet, Jennifer Venditti for Marty Supreme and Gabriel Domingues for The Secret Agent. Producers introduced a "Fab Five" format for the presentation, in which actors from each nominated film introduced the five nominees.

  Voting itself changed as well. The 98th ceremony was the first with an enforced rule that every member must watch all the nominated films in a category before voting in the final round. A member who had not done so had to abstain from that category.

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• 6. Building the Show

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  In March 2025, the Academy rehired television producers Raj Kapoor and Katy Mullan to oversee the 2026 ceremony, the third year in a row for the pair. Comedian Conan O'Brien returned as host for a second consecutive year. His longtime collaborators Jeff Ross and Mike Sweeney came back as producers, with Sweeney also writing. Hamish Hamilton returned as director. The show aired on ABC in the United States and streamed on Hulu.

  Academy CEO Bill Kramer and then-president Janet Yang said in a press release that the previous year's show had been visually stunning. They credited O'Brien with guiding the evening using humor, warmth and reverence.

  Before the ceremony, O'Brien described the host's job at a press conference. He said, "It's not just about being funny in the moment-to-moment, it's also about acknowledging what this is about in the larger sense." Asked about poking fun at the American political climate, he called hosting "a very thin line" and said the show had to be funny without tipping into anger or politics. On the night he still made thinly veiled references to President Donald Trump. They touched on the renaming of the Kennedy Center and the lack of arrests over the Epstein files, though he never named the President.

  A large writing team, including Carol Leifer, Ian Karmel and Jon Macks, worked alongside O'Brien and Sweeney. Josh Groban, Sterling K. Brown and Jim Downey appeared in scripted sketches. Downey reprised his role from One Battle After Another. Groban also sang "I Won" during the opening monologue. Comedian Amelia Dimoldenberg served as social media ambassador and red carpet correspondent for the third straight year, and Tamron Hall and Jesse Palmer hosted the pre-show.

  On the 6th of March, Variety reported that Rose Byrne, Melissa McCarthy, Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig would present together for the 15th anniversary of their 2011 film Bridesmaids. At a press conference on the 11th of March, the producers confirmed that reunion and another, of actors from Marvel film adaptations. Two days later, People reported on a planned surprise inspired by The Devil Wears Prada from 2006.

  The stage carried its own theme. Producers called it "humanity" and said everything on stage was inspired by human touch and creativity. Production designer Misty Buckley said the previous year's set had been monolithic and temple-like. This year's looked toward reverential spaces, with beautiful light, organic forms and trees. Vanity Fair published photos on the 14th of March of the Dolby Theatre stage dressed as a garden courtyard, with handmade trees and greenery. The team lit it to feel like golden hour and used glass, metal and stone rather than luxurious finishes. Mechanized LED panels moved around the stage to reveal new spaces. Designer Alana Billingsley said the contrast between organic growth and rigid architecture created the feeling that life can exist anywhere.

  Security was tighter than usual. On the 11th of March, producers announced extra measures after an FBI warning of a possible attack on California by Iran, in light of the Iran war. The Los Angeles Police Department said the Dolby Theatre would be patrolled by approximately 1,000 private security officers. Uniformed officers, surveillance cameras and drones were deployed as well.

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• 7. Music, Memory, and Disputes

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  Only two of the five Best Original Song nominees were performed live, and the choice drew open protest. The producers cited time constraints and broader structural changes to the telecast. A letter to all music nominees, obtained by Variety, promised that the category would stay part of the broadcast. Each song would get a custom package built from footage of its film, with behind-the-scenes material about the songwriting.

  Diane Warren, nominated for "Dear Me" from Diane Warren: Relentless, condemned the plan. She said, "It is all of us or none of us and that is what it should be." Kramer told The Hollywood Reporter that every nominee would be represented in a special way. He said the two live performances did not negate the other nominees.

  The two chosen songs were "Golden" from KPop Demon Hunters and "I Lied to You" from Sinners. Ejae, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami performed "Golden", in a segment that opened with traditional Korean instrumentalists and dance. Miles Caton and songwriter Raphael Saadiq performed "I Lied to You" as a large homage to Sinners. They were joined by ballet dancer Misty Copeland, musicians Eric Gales, Brittany Howard, Christone "Kingfish" Ingram, Bobby Rush, Shaboozey and Alice Smith, and co-stars Buddy Guy, Jayme Lawson and Li Jun Li.

  "Golden" then won, and its acceptance speech went wrong. When Ejae finished her part, co-writer Yu Han Lee began to speak and the playoff music cut him off. He tried to talk over it, but the songwriters were quickly ushered off stage. The audience in the theater booed, and social media criticized the cutoff widely. Backstage, Ejae half-joked about the sudden musical cue. Lee and Mark Sonnenblick then finished the remarks they could not complete onstage. The next day, Walt Disney Television executive Rob Mills told Variety his team would take a hard look at how speeches are handled next year.

  Two days before the ceremony, another dispute reached the headlines. Palestinian actor Motaz Malhees, from the nominated film The Voice of Hind Rajab, could not attend. He said new American immigration measures in force since the 1st of January 2026 had widened entry restrictions to travelers holding documents issued or endorsed by the Palestinian National Authority. In an Instagram message he wrote that "a passport can be blocked, but not a voice".

  The In Memoriam segment ran in an extended format. Rob Reiner and his wife, producer Michele Singer Reiner, opened the list. They were killed on the 14th of December 2025. Billy Crystal introduced their tribute, which was joined by Kathy Bates, Meg Ryan, Kiefer Sutherland and many others. Rachel McAdams presented the tributes to Diane Keaton and Catherine O'Hara. Barbra Streisand honored Robert Redford, who died in September 2025, by performing "The Way We Were". The Los Angeles Master Chorale performed "Storybook Love" and "Amazing Grace". Some notable names did not appear, including Brigitte Bardot, Hulk Hogan and George Wendt.

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• 8. The Verdict

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  On Rotten Tomatoes, 69 percent of 13 critics' reviews were positive. The site's consensus called it "A back-to-basics evening that was generally pleasing, mostly inspired, and once again for the cinephiles." Dominic Patten of Deadline Hollywood wrote that the night "wasn't perfect, but it sure was something worth watching." Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone praised the surprise wins, the timely jokes and O'Brien's irreverence. He called Streisand's Redford tribute "the kind of Oscar magic that could only happen on this award show".

  Bilge Ebiri of Vulture described the telecast as "an Oscars for people who actually bother to watch movies". David Sims of The Atlantic said the show made plenty of room to celebrate both Sinners and One Battle After Another sincerely, with O'Brien running a relatively tight ship.

  Not every critic agreed. Owen Gleiberman of Variety called it "a tasteful and overly safe show sustained by just enough suspense" and found the production design bland and generic. Judy Berman of Time faulted the emphasis on headlines and topical zingers over a celebration of film artistry. Ed Power of The Telegraph went furthest, declaring the show a "sorry circus".

  The American audience on ABC averaged 17.86 million people. That was a 9% drop from the previous year and the lowest Oscar viewership since the 94th ceremony in 2022. Among adults 18-49, the show earned a 3.92 rating, equal to about 5.34 million viewers and a 14% decline. It was still the most-watched primetime entertainment telecast of the season, and it generated more than 181 million impressions on social media.

  The Academy had held related events around the main show. On the 16th of November 2025, the 16th Governors Awards at the Ray Dolby Ballroom of the Ovation Hollywood complex honored Debbie Allen, Tom Cruise and Wynn Thomas with Honorary Awards. Dolly Parton received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. The Scientific and Technical Awards followed on the 28th of April 2026 at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles, hosted by Sofia Carson.

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