The 98th Academy Awards take place on March 15, 2026, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. Conan O'Brien hosts for the second consecutive year. The ceremony airs on ABC and streams on Hulu.


But before the envelopes are opened, the story of this year's Oscars has already been written by one film, one record, and one quiet shift in what Hollywood has decided to value.

Oscars 2026: The Full Nominees List (Key Categories)

Best Picture

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

Best Actor

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

Best Actress

  • Jessie Buckley
  • Rose Byrne
  • Kate Hudson
  • Renate Reinsve
  • Emma Stone

Best Casting (new category, first year)

Sinners: A Record That Changes the Conversation

No discussion of the Oscars 2026 begins anywhere other than Sinners. With 16 nominations the most in the history of the Academy Awards, surpassing the previous record of 14 shared by All About Eve (1950), Titanic (1997), and La La Land (2016) the film arrives at the Dolby Theatre as the most-discussed awards contender in a generation.

What makes this significant beyond the statistical footnote is what Sinners represents as a cultural object: a period horror film with a Black ensemble cast, a $90 million budget, an original screenplay, and zero franchise attachment. In an industry that has spent the past decade retreating toward IP, sequels, and brand extensions, Sinners is a bet on cinema as an art form and the Academy has responded accordingly.

Whether it wins Best Picture is, at this point, almost secondary. The nominations themselves are the statement.

One Battle After Another, Paul Thomas Anderson's most recent film, received 13 nominations and is the most credible competition. The tension between these two films is the central narrative of this awards season.

What the New Best Casting Category Means

The introduction of Best Casting as a competitive Oscar category the first new category in several years is more significant than it appears.

Casting is the discipline that sits between the script and the screen. It is the decision that determines whether a role is merely filled or genuinely inhabited. For decades, it was the most influential craft in Hollywood without formal Academy recognition. The casting directors who shaped films like The Godfather, Schindler's List, Moonlight, and Parasite worked without the possibility of an Oscar.

That changes in 2026. The shortlist for Best Casting includes the teams behind Sinners, Hamnet, and Sentimental Value. For the industry, this recognition recalibrates the hierarchy of creative credit in ways that will be felt for years.

Oscars 2026 Red Carpet: The Fashion Intelligence

The 2026 awards season red carpet has been building toward March 15 with unusual coherence. The SAG Awards on March 1st established the directional vocabulary: couture with structural clarity, sheer fabrics as primary elements rather than accents, crystal embellishment used as punctuation, and a return to designer authorship rather than pure celebrity reach.

The houses most actively present this season Schiaparelli, Dior, Valentino, Balenciaga, Louis Vuitton are each approaching red carpet dressing as a statement of creative identity. Schiaparelli's surrealist vocabulary has found a natural home on a red carpet that increasingly rewards the unexpected. Dior under Maria Grazia Chiuri has continued its dialogue with feminism and craft. Valentino under Alessandro Michele is in a transitional moment that makes its Oscars presence particularly worth watching.

From the SAG Awards, the looks that established the aesthetic register for 2026:

  • Teyana Taylor in sequined Thom Browne with ribbon trains the most architectural moment of the season so far
  • Demi Moore in Schiaparelli, a black bustier dress with white tulle cloud construction 1950s Hollywood re-read through a surrealist lens
  • Emma Stone in shimmery lilac Louis Vuitton 1990s minimalism with couture finish

These three moments define the range: the sculptural, the dramatic, and the quietly precise. The Oscars red carpet on March 15 will operate within this vocabulary and push against it.

The names to watch on Oscar night: Jessie Buckley, Ariana Grande, Chase Infiniti, Renate Reinsve. Each has a stylist relationship and a visual identity that makes their look a genuine editorial event. Emma Stone, a returning presence, has earned the right to surprise.

For the men: Michael B. Jordan's appearance will be watched as a leading nominee and one of the most studied presences in Hollywood style, his Oscars look carries weight beyond the red carpet.

The Predictions

The honest answer is that this is the most genuinely competitive Best Picture race in several years. The Academy has nominated ten films that represent a real range of cinema not a single superhero film, not a single franchise extension. This is unusual, and it matters for how the vote distributes.

Best Picture: Sinners the record nominations create a gravitational pull that is difficult to overcome. The Academy has a history of rewarding the film that has defined the conversation of its year.

Best Actor: Timothée Chalamet (Marty Supreme) the early consensus choice, though Leonardo DiCaprio's presence in a Paul Thomas Anderson film creates the closest competition.

Best Actress: Emma Stone the category's most competitive race. Jessie Buckley and Renate Reinsve both have strong critical support.

Best Casting: The team behind Sinners it would be a statement consistent with the Academy's broader recognition of the film.

Why This Ceremony Matters Beyond the Awards

The 98th Academy Awards arrive at a specific cultural moment: a Hollywood in which the relationship between cinema and streaming has been renegotiated, in which the theatrical experience has reasserted itself for certain types of films, and in which the industry is asking, again, what it is for.

Sinners made for theatres, designed for a large screen, built around practical effects and live performance is the year's answer to that question. The Academy's response to it, whatever the vote produces, will tell us something real about where the institution believes the art form is going.

That is, ultimately, why the Oscars still matter. Not the gowns, not the speeches, not the television ratings. The question underneath it all: what does this industry think is worth rewarding? On March 15, we find out.