2026 Oscar Winner Predictions

The 2025 awards season is finally coming to an end. All the precursors are in, and a lot of speeches have been given. Lots of narratives have formed, then collapsed, and then been rebuilt three times over. At some point, the spreadsheets and trend charts stop being helpful, and it comes down to instinct.

This year’s Oscars, airing March 15, 2026, on ABC and streaming on Hulu with Conan O’Brien returning as host, arrive after one of the most chaotic and unpredictable seasons in recent memory. Predictable years can feel like a slow march toward the inevitable. This was not one of those years. Lots of films surged and stalled, and frontrunners lost momentum overnight, as well as categories that looked settled suddenly cracked open.

And the nominations themselves reflect that chaos. Sinners leads the field with a record-breaking 16 nominations, while One Battle After Another sits right behind with 13. Close behind are Frankenstein, Marty Supreme, and Sentimental Value, each with nine nominations. On top of all that, this year introduces Best Casting as a brand-new category, bringing the total number of competitive Oscars to 24.

But, despite the wide field, the night still feels like it revolves around two films.

For months now, the Best Picture race has essentially been a two-film tug of war: One Battle After Another versus Sinners.

On paper, the case for One Battle After Another looks overwhelming. The film has been sweeping major industry awards all season. It won at the Golden Globes, Critics Choice, BAFTA, and the Producers Guild Award. That kind of run historically points straight to Best Picture. On top of that, it feels almost locked to win Adapted Screenplay and Best Director for Paul Thomas Anderson. If you’re checking boxes on the traditional Oscar pathway, One Battle After Another has nearly all of them.

And yet… Sinners never disappeared from the conversation.

The film has maintained serious passion across the industry, culminating in a big Ensemble win at the Actor Awards. That matters. Actors make up the largest voting branch in the Academy, and when a film wins their top prize at their own award show, that often signals broader affection. Even more importantly, Sinners leads the entire Oscar field in nominations, so we know the academy fell head over heels for the film.

So the question becomes simple but maddening: do you follow the guild dominance of One Battle After Another, or the massive overall support for Sinners?

Right now, the safer prediction still leans toward One Battle After Another. The PGA win in particular is difficult to ignore. But this is not the kind of race where a Sinners upset would shock anyone.

If Best Picture has been tense, Best Actor has been even messier.

For much of the season, Timothée Chalamet looked like the inevitable winner for Marty Supreme. He won the Golden Globe and Critics Choice and remained the critics’ darling for months. Then the precursors started shifting.

Chalamet lost BAFTA in a surprise upset, and then lost the Actor Awards (SAG) to Michael B. Jordan for Sinners. That second loss is what really changed the temperature of the race. SAG arriving just days before Oscar voting closed gave Jordan a perfectly timed surge of momentum.

Now the category feels genuinely split. Chalamet still has the critics and the early-season wins. Jordan has the late-breaking industry support and the advantage of starring in a film expected to perform strongly across the ceremony.

This really does feel like a coin flip.

If Best Actor is tense, Supporting Actress might be the most confusing category of the night.

Three different major precursors went to three different performers. Wunmi Mosaku won BAFTA for Sinners. Teyana Taylor took the Golden Globe for One Battle After Another. And Amy Madigan dominated the critics circuit while also winning Critics Choice and SAG for Weapons.

Madigan’s strength across the season is undeniable, but her situation is unusual. She’s the only Oscar nominee from her film, and she wasn’t nominated at BAFTA. That kind of isolation can sometimes hurt when the Academy starts filling out ballots.

Mosaku, meanwhile, benefits from Sinners potentially having a big night. If the film is winning multiple awards, she could easily be part of that wave. And Taylor remains a serious threat if voters decide to reward the overall strength of One Battle After Another. 

Then there’s Supporting Actor, which oddly feels more straightforward despite the chaos everywhere else. Sean Penn has emerged as the clear frontrunner after winning both BAFTA and SAG. Earlier in the season, Stellan Skarsgård looked like the favorite after his Golden Globe win, but momentum has clearly shifted.

Given how unpredictable the season has been, you can imagine scenarios where someone else slips in, Skarsgård resurging or Delroy Lindo surprising. But ignoring Penn at this stage would feel reckless.

No matter how it unfolds, this season has been genuinely fun to follow. The frontrunners weren’t always clear, and momentum has shifted constantly. And even now, several categories still feel like they could go either way.

That’s the kind of uncertainty awards season needs every once in a while. And if the rest of the ceremony matches the unpredictability of the past few months, Oscar night might still have a few surprises left. After months of twists and surprises, here’s where everything ultimately lands:

Best Picture
“Bugonia”
“F1”
“Frankenstein”
“Hamnet”
“Marty Supreme”
“One Battle After Another“**
“The Secret Agent”
“Sentimental Value”
“Sinners”
“Train Dreams”

Best Director
Paul Thomas Anderson – “One Battle After Another“**
Ryan Coogler – “Sinners“
Josh Safdie – “Marty Supreme“
Joachim Trier – “Sentimental Value”
Chloé Zhao – “Hamnet”

Best Actress
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”

Best Actor
Timothée Chalamet – “Marty Supreme”
Leonardo DiCaprio – “One Battle After Another”
Ethan Hawke – “Blue Moon”
Michael B. Jordan – “Sinners”**
Wagner Moura – “The Secret Agent”

Best Supporting Actress
Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas – “Sentimental Value”
Amy Madigan – “Weapons”
Wunmi Mosaku – “Sinners“**
Teyana Taylor – “One Battle After Another”
Elle Fanning – “Sentimental Value”

Best Supporting Actor
Benicio Del Toro – “One Battle After Another”
Jacob Elordi – “Frankenstein”
Delroy Lindo – “Sinners”
Sean Penn – “One Battle After Another”**
Stellan Skarsgård – “Sentimental Value”

Best Adapted Screenplay
“Bugonia”
“Frankenstein”
“Hamnet”
“One Battle After Another” **
“Train Dreams” 

Best Original Screenplay
Blue Moon
“It Was Just an Accident”
“Marty Supreme”
“Sentimental Value”
“Sinners” **

Best Animated Feature
“Arco”
“Elio”
“KPop Demon Hunters”**
“Little Amélie or The Character of Rain”
“Zootopia 2”

Best Documentary Feature
“The Alabama Solution”
“Come See Me in the Good Light”
“Cutting Through Rocks”
“Mr. Nobody Against Putin”**
“The Perfect Neighbor”

Best International Feature Film
“It Was Just an Accident” – France
“The Secret Agent” – Brazil
“Sentimental Value” – Norway**
“Sirāt” – Spain
“The Voice of Hind Rajab” – Tunisia

Best Casting
“The Secret Agent”
“Hamnet”
“One Battle After Another”
“Sinners”**
“Marty Supreme”

Best Cinematography
“Frankenstein”
“Marty Supreme”
“One Battle After Another”**
“Sinners”
“Train Dreams”

Best Costume Design
“Avatar: Fire and Ash”
“Frankenstein”**
“Hamnet”
“Marty Supreme“
“Sinners”

Best Film Editing
“F1”
“Marty Supreme”
“One Battle After Another”**
“Sentimental Value”
“Sinners”

Best Make-Up & Hairstyling
“Frankenstein”**
“Kokuho“
“Sinners”
“The Smashing Machine”
“The Ugly Stepsister”

Best Production Design
“Frankenstein”**
“Hamnet”
“Marty Supreme”
“One Battle After Another”
“Sinners”

Best Original Score

“Bugonia”
“Frankenstein”
“Hamnet”
“One Battle After Another”
“Sinners”**

Best Original Song
Dear Me” – “Diane Warren: Relentless”
“Golden” – “KPop Demon Hunters”**
“I Lied to You” – “Sinners”
“Sweet Dreams of Joy” – “Viva Verdi!”
“Train Dreams” – “Train Dreams”

Best Sound
“F1”**
“Frankenstein”
“One Battle After Another”
“Sinners”
“Sirāt“

Best Visual Effects
“Avatar: Fire and Ash”**
“F1”
“Jurassic World: Rebirth”
“The Lost Bus”
“Sinners”

Best Animated Short Film
“Butterfly”
“Forevergreen”**
“The Girl Who Cried Pearls”
“Retirement Plan”
“The Three Sisters”

Best Documentary Short Film
“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”

Live Action Short Film
“Butcher’s Stain“
“A Friend of Dorothy”
“Jane Austen’s Period Drama”
“The Singers”**
“Two People Exchanging Saliva”