Oscars 2026 Educated Guesses

These Oscar predictions are always long enough on their own, it doesn't help to have to add several introductory paragraphs explaining whatever insipid drama is brewing behind the scenes that might sway the results. Thankfully, there was precious little of that this year. Sure, there's the whole BAFTA Tourette's thing, but I Swear isn't nominated for any Oscars, which means it won't happen again (aside from an inevitable joke by the host) and I don't need to deal with it. Thank goodness for small favors. It was just an enjoyable Oscar season, complete with some refreshingly outside the box films competing for the top prizes. Let's get started.

Best Animated Feature
Arco
Elio
KPop Demon Hunters
Little Amelie, or the Character of Rain
Zootopia 2

Who Will Win: KPop Demon Hunters is a genuine cultural phenomenon and has had this sewn up for a long time. It arrived at the perfect moment, capitalizing on the ascendancy of South Korean films, music, webcomics....pretty much everything. The soundtrack has been omnipresent and the film won an impressive ten trophies at the animation-centric Annie Awards. The closest competition is probably Zootopia 2, but sequels tend to struggle in this category (not even Puss in Boots: The Last Wish could pull it off). Speaking of sequels, one surprising omission was Ne Zha 2, the Chinese animated blockbuster that was so popular in its native country that it became the highest grossing animated movie of all time this past year. Supposedly the distributor made a mistake somewhere with the submission process, but it doesn't matter in the end - it couldn't beat KPop Demon Hunters. Nothing can.

My Choice: I like most of these movies pretty well, but I can't say any of them connected with me too deeply. The artistry of KPop Demon Hunters is quite impressive, it deserves the win. Two animated films I really liked that didn't make the cut are Lost in Starlight and In Your Dreams, but those don't have a killer soundtrack to back them up.

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

Who Will Win: By contrast, this category is nowhere near settled. It's a tight race between three excellent movies. Unlike other branches of the Academy, there isn't really any documentary-specific organization that provides a clue where the voters are leaning. The Producer's Guild picked a movie that isn't even nominated, which did little to clear things up. I'm going with The Perfect Neighbor because it's racked up numerous other awards and definitely generated the most conversation and analysis out of these movies. Mr. Nobody Against Putin has also won several contests and the Academy has shown a willingness in the past to stick it to Vladimir Putin, but the ongoing violence and chaos in the Middle East is largely keeping Russia out of the news lately. Meanwhile, The Alabama Solution didn't initially make a big splash, but it's examination of inhumane conditions in Alabama prisons is such an explosive piece of journalism that it could easily pull off a surprise win once more Academy members have seen it. I'll stick with Perfect Neighbor for now, in part because of the conceptual innovation of telling its story almost entirely with police body camera footage, but this category is keeping me up at night.

My Choice: A couple of months ago, I would have said The Perfect Neighbor, but then I saw The Alabama Solution, which would have easily landed somewhere in the top three on my best of the year list. It is a masterpiece. It would also really annoy the worst people in the country, so that's appealing too.

Best Adapted Screenplay
Paul Thomas Anderson for One Battle After Another
Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar for Train Dreams
Guillermo del Toro for Frankenstein
Will Tracy for Bugonia
Chloe Zhao and Maggie O'Ferrell for Hamnet

Who Will Win: Most of this year's heaviest hitters are in the Original category so this should be a cakewalk for Anderson and One Battle After Another. It's here because it was based on Thomas Pynchon's novel Vineland, but Anderson very much made it his own. Taking only the broad strokes of the storyline, he changed all the character names and emphasized different themes. The novel was written in 1990 and is very much about the moral failure of the "War on Drugs," but One Battle After Another (despite its ambiguous setting) emphasizes the modern moral failures of America's immigration enforcement and the nation's slow slide into an authoritarian police state. 

My Choice: I'll have no complaints about a win for One Battle After Another. I found Bugonia to be an interesting work of adaptation as well, a remake of a twenty year old Korean movie (Save the Green Planet) retooled for the United States and for a new era.

Best Original Screenplay
Ryan Coogler for Sinners
Robert Kaplow for Blue Moon
Jafar Panahi for It Was Just An Accident
Josh Safdie and Ronald Bronstein for Marty Supreme
Joachim Trier and Eskil Vogt for Sentimental Value

Who Will Win: This feels like a pretty decisive win for Sinners. Ryan Coogler was able to pull off a conceptually ambitious jazz age drama that transitions into a high-energy horror film halfway through. I've tried to describe it to people who haven't seen it and it sounds ridiculous, but it almost completely works in execution. There is only one potential upset I can imagine - Jafar Panahi, the dissident Iranian filmmaker who made It Was Just An Accident illegally inside of Iran before leaving the country to get France to help release it. Given the American government's current mindless blundering in his home country, some voters might want to demonstrate that we're not all morons with no appreciation for the complicated cultures of places we drop bombs on.

My Choice: But I may be blinded by wishful thinking. I thought It Was Just An Accident was an amazing movie and I wish it was also competing in Best Picture and Director at the very least. 

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

Who Will Win: I have to be honest here. I'm still pretty salty about how Best Actress went last year, when Demi Moore won just about every other award for The Substance only to be upset by Mikey Madison for Anora. Madison gave a good, solid performance but Moore's was a career-defining tour de force. Despite the rapid proliferation of jokes comparing Moore getting beaten by a younger actress to her character's struggles in the movie, genre bias against horror seemed like a much larger factor than ageism. This year, the Supporting Actress category is giving me some deja vu. Amy Madigan's unforgettable performance as the haggard but deadly witch Gladys has been racking up trophies, including the Screen Actor's Guild award (but again, so did Moore). Given that this is the only nomination for Weapons while The Substance was competing for Best Picture, it feels like a "fool me once" situation.

Before the SAG awards, the presumed winner was Teyana Taylor as Perfidia, the revolutionary group leader who dominates the first act of One Battle After Another. She's an intense, polarizing character, but nobody has questioned Taylor's talent at bringing her to life. I don't think OBAA is getting through the ceremony without at least one acting win, and I have a feeling this will be it. 

My Choice: Amy Madigan. I'll almost always root for horror (although to be clear, Wunmi Mosaku is also in a horror movie, but her nomination was a bit of a surprise and while a win isn't impossible, I'm not seeing it) but her unrecognizable performance and that ghastly makeup are just so effective. She's a real "love to hate" villain, which makes it all the more enjoyable when Gladys gets her unexpectedly hilarious comeuppance at the end. I hope I'm just overcorrecting after whiffing so hard with Demi Moore last year and she does manage to pull it off.

Best Supporting Actor
Benicio del Toro in One Battle After Another
Jacob Elordi in Frankenstein
Delroy Lindo in Sinners
Sean Penn in One Battle After Another
Stellan Skarsgard in Sentimental Value

Who Will Win: I'm going a bit out on a limb with this one, but this category has been a bit weird this year. Most people are predicting a win for Sean Penn as the violently unstable Colonel Lockjaw from One Battle After Another. It's the kind of performance that would normally be considered over the top, if not for the reality that even Lockjaw's most deranged moments look positively erudite compared to the stupid shit Pete Hegseth says all the time. Penn won the Screen Actor's Guild, but this is where it starts to get more complicated.

For whatever reason, the Norwegian film Sentimental Value was completely shut out of the SAG award nominations. After that, most Oscar watchers assumed the movie would do poorly at the Oscars too, but the opposite happened. It rebounded with a vengeance, landing in all the major categories, including four acting nominations in total. Is it another demonstration of the Academy's growing international membership? Probably, and I feel like it's headed for at least one win, and this one makes the most sense. It would be Penn's third Oscar and he clearly doesn't care all that much, having skipped most of the other award season events. Plus he's kind of an obnoxious guy, which shouldn't matter but let's be real, we're all only human. Stellan Skarsgard, meanwhile, is a veteran actor who has appeared in numerous American films and has never won. I could be wrong, maybe an OBAA sweep will get Penn the statue, but since the usual metrics aren't so useful this time, I'm going with my gut.

My Choice: I'm totally rooting for Delroy Lindo, although I don't think he has much of a chance. He's a great actor who should have a whole list of previous nominations by now, but somehow this is only his first.

Best Actress
Jessie Buckley in Hamnet
Rose Byrne in If I Had Legs, I'd Kick You
Kate Hudson in Song Sung Blue
Renate Reinsve in Sentimental Value
Emma Stone in Bugonia

Who Will Win: The only acting race where the outcome is near certain. Jessie Buckley has steamrolled her fellow nominees in every major contest thus far with no end in sight. It's a capital-A acting performance - she yells, she cries, and in one scene that might make you forget to breathe, gives birth. None of the other nominees, as good as they are, represent any real threat, even if fans of Rose Byrne's similarly no holds barred performance keep insisting she's about to upset. We all find our own ways to cope, I suppose.

My Choice: Renate Reinsve. It's not a showy performance, which puts her at a disadvantage, but it's a powerful one. The emotionally cathartic scene with her and her character's sister near the end of Sentimental Value is easily the standout scene of the film.

Best Actor
Timothee Chalamet in Marty Supreme
Leonardo DiCaprio in One Battle After Another
Ethan Hawke in Blue Moon
Michael B. Jordan in Sinners
Wagner Moura in The Secret Agent

Who Will Win: At the start of this year's Oscar race, most of us who follow this stuff assumed the winner would be Timothee Chalamet, who came close to winning last year for playing Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown. The almost pathologically ambitious table tennis player Marty Mauser is another role that seems reverse engineered to win awards, but the momentum has shifted as the awards draw near. Michael B. Jordan's dual role in Sinners as the twins Elijah "Smoke" and Elias "Stack" Moore has gotten more appreciated as the film's historic nominations haul (more on that in a bit) has exposed the genre-bending movie to people who otherwise might not have watched it. 

Jordan's surprise win at the Screen Actor's Guild awards seems to have sealed the deal, and it makes sense the more I think about it. The Academy has a tendency to make the young pretty boy heartthrobs like Chalamet wait quite a while for their big moment - just ask his fellow nominee Leonardo DiCaprio, who didn't win until his fifth nomination. I suspect Chalamet will eventually win an Oscar, he just might be a good deal older when it happens.

My Choice: Michael B. Jordan is a fantastic actor and should have won this (or at least been nominated) for Fruitvale Station back in 2013, in my opinion. I'm certain that his long partnership with Ryan Coogler will one day be discussed with the same reverence as the Scorsese/De Niro films. 

Best Director
Paul Thomas Anderson for One Battle After Another
Ryan Coogler for Sinners
Josh Safdie for Marty Supreme
Joachim Trier for Sentimental Value
Chloe Zhao for Hamnet

Who Will Win: Paul Thomas Anderson has a reputation as one of the greatest living American filmmakers and yet he's never won, not even for the revered There Will Be Blood. He's almost certain to have a change of luck this year, having already won the ever reliable Director's Guild award. One Battle After Another is his most commercially successful film and topped an overwhelming majority of critic top ten lists (including mine). Plus, that "overdue" narrative is hard to beat. 

My Choice: An interesting lineup to be sure. While a win by Ryan Coogler would be a joyous moment, it's hard to imagine not recognizing Anderson's achievement in creating such an epic, engaging, defiantly weird movie. Either of those two would be fine with me.

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

Who Will Win: Let's go backwards as per usual. F1 is embarrassingly worse than all the other nominees and thinking about the other films it might have replaced is infuriating. It's about how Brad Pitt's race car driving character is always right, never has to learn anything, and all the young guys and women need to just be quiet and learn from his experience. This kind of corrosive Boomer/Gen X narcissism has wrecked the country, so they need to cool it with the bragging for a while. The Secret Agent's inclusion marks two years in a row (after I'm Still Here) that a Brazilian film has been up for Best Picture. It's an impressive achievement, but the former is a lot less accessible than the latter and the competition is just too steep. I personally found Train Dreams to be quite beautiful, but it's a slow art film that is unlikely to achieve the consensus needed to win with the Academy's preferential ballot system.

Frankenstein is a triumph of production design, but it's hard to argue it's the best film of the year. Marty Supreme is a gripping movie but it's probably too overheated (and too reliant on wacky stunt casting) for everyone's taste. Bugonia has a lot of cultural relevance but it takes a few massive left turns that are interesting to analyze but probably fatal when it comes to getting a consensus vote. Sentimental Value is a very well-acted drama with a potent emotional through line, but there isn't anything about it that speaks to the times we're living in. 

In the early days of this Oscar season, I believed that the biggest threat to One Battle After Another would be Hamnet, a tearjerking drama about the family tragedy that may have inspired one of William Shakespeare's most famous plays. You could almost call it "Shakespeare in Mourning." But now it's clear that the strongest challenger is actually Sinners, which broke the all-time record for nominations with 16 in total. This is partly because of the addition of a new category for Casting (which Sinners will likely win), but it's still downright astounding for what is, at least in part, a horror film. The Substance had no chance at winning Best Picture last year, as exciting as all the attention was. Sinners does. It feels ascendant after major victories at the Screen Actors Guild. Are we looking at the first horror film to pull off the ultimate prize since The Silence of the Lambs (and only the second overall)?

It could happen, but it's up against a true juggernaut in One Battle After Another. The other guilds and about 99 percent of the critics in America have all lined up behind it. At this point, it's one of those movies that enjoyed so much acclaim that viewers in the future will inevitably be disappointed when it doesn't live up to insane expectations. I suspect it will win, if not as commandingly as I initially thought.

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

Thanks for reading! I'm already looking forward to that Melania Trump documentary not getting nominated next year and President Pissbaby throwing a tantrum. See you then!