Breaking Down The 2026 Academy Award Nominations!

Bright and early this morning, creators and performers from across the Hollywood spectrum got the call that their lives were about to change forever – they are officially Academy Award nominees! Let’s break down all the juicy Oscar gos…

One person who is probably the most happy today is Ryan Coogler, whose vampire drama Sinners absolutely shattered records this morning, becoming the most-nominated film in a single year… ever! Yes, even more than Titanic! Basically, every category they were eligible for, they were nominated in, the one exception being Best Actress in a Leading Role. Everything else – from Best Picture, Actor (Michael B. Jordan), Supporting Actor & Actress (Delroy Lindo & Wunmi Mosaku), Director, Score, Production Design, Editing, Costumes (making Ruth E. Carter the most-nominated Black woman in Oscars history), etc. etc. etc. – they have an entry in. That is BEYOND impressive! It makes me think that there can be no other winner for Best Picture than Sinners, right? It’s only logical!

And yet, we can’t forget how Hamnet took home the top prize in the Best Drama Film category over Sinners at the Golden Globes. The period drama scored a not-too-shabby 8 nominations, including, yes, Best Picture, as well as Best Actress for Jessie Buckley (who also won the Globe) and a second Best Director nomination for Chloé Zhao (who won the last time she was nominated). So we’ll be keeping a close eye on them for sure.

However, Sinners’s biggest competition, One Battle After Another, is not going down without a fight either. The Golden Globes winner for Best Comedy/Musical Film scored an also-impressive 13 nominations, including 3 just for writer/producer/director Paul Thomas Anderson. Leonardo DiCaprio gets his 7th acting nomination, Sean Penn his 6th (he’s won twice), Benicio Del Toro his 3rd (he’s won once), and Teyana Taylor her first (after winning the Golden Globe), with only breakout star Chase Infiniti not making the cut.

Though I was personally hoping for more, Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein made out with 9 nominations, including Best Picture, however Del Toro himself didn’t make the list of Best Directors. He did get a nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay though. Critics Choice Award winner Jacob Elordi got the obvious nod for Best Supporting Actor, but he seems to have lost a little momentum after losing in the same category to Stellan Skarsgard (whom he is competing against again at the Oscars) at the Golden Globes. At this point, Frankenstein's best chances of Oscar gold are probably in the handful of technical awards it’s nominated for, like Best Production Design and Hair & Makeup (though not Visual Effects… huh??).

Both Golden Globes Best Actor winners, Timothée Chalamet and Wagner Moura, are set to go head-to-head at the Oscars alongside the aforementioned Michael B. Jordan and Leonardo DiCaprio, as well as Ethan Hawke. With this nomination, Timmy becomes the youngest ever male actor with 3 acting nods under his belt! (He’s also nominated as a producer on Best Picture nominee Marty Supreme.)

Emma Stone scored her 5th acting nomination this year for her role in Bugonia. While it seems like she doesn’t have much of a shot going up against Globes winners Jessie Buckley and Rose Byrne, here’s an interesting statistic: Every time Emma has been nominated for Best Lead Actress (La La Land, Poor Things), as opposed to Supporting Actress (Birdman, The Favourite), she has won. Remember she was not expected to win for Poor Things either, so… I wouldn’t count her out just yet. (And to be honest, if anyone from that movie should have gotten a nomination, it should have been Jesse Plemons...)

Elle Fanning earned her first-ever Oscar nomination (for Best Supporting Actor) thanks to her role in Best Picture nominee Sentimental Value. She will be competing against her co-star Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas in the same category, as well as Globes winner Teyana Taylor, Critics Choice winner (and fan fave) Amy Madigan, and Sinners’s Wunmi Mosaku. It’s a stacked and competitive category, and the Supporting categories are always the most unpredictable, so we’ll see what happens!

It’s definitely a peak year for International Films, with 2 of its nominees (Sentimental Value and The Secret Agent) also nominated for Best Picture, another nominated for Original Screenplay (It Was Just An Accident), and another whose all-female team nominated for Best Sound (Sirat).

Elsewhere, the category for Best Casting makes its debut this year, and the category is dominated by women! Nina Gold (Hamnet), Jennifer Venditti (Marty Supreme), Cassandra Kulukundis (One Battle after Another), Francine Maisler (Sinners), and Gabriel Domingues (The Secret Agent) are all vying for the prize.

In less happy news, some surprise snubs include Wicked: For Good, which got nary a crumb this year, being completely shut out from all categories. Golden Globe nominee Paul Mescal was unable to make the cut alongside his Hamnet co-star Jessie Buckley. Weapons was only able to secure the one nomination for Amy Madigan. And although Train Dreams was nominated for 4 awards including Best Picture, its star (and Golden Globes nominee) Joel Edgerton was not one of them. Whomp-whomp…

Check out the full list of nominees here and tune in to the 98th Academy Awards Sunday, March 15, on ABC and Hulu!