The Academy Award nominations for 2026 have been announced with the red carpet set to be rolled out on 15th March.
You can find the full nomination list on the Academy Awards website, but here are the standout headlines from this year’s Oscar nomination announcement.
Sinners breaks the Oscar nomination record
Out of 24 categories total, vampire horror Sinners has sunk its teeth into 16 nominations, including what will be some of the most coveted awards on the night: Best Picture and Best Actor.
That’s a record-breaking number of nominations for the Academy Awards. The previous holders of this title were All About Eve, Titanic, and, more recently, La La Land, all of which tied with 14 nominations.
Of course, Michael B. Jordan has been nominated for Best Actor. It has us asking one question: if you play two characters in one film, does that make you more worthy of the award? Something to think about…
Happy for you, but unsurprising Oscar nominations
Our boy Timothée Chalamet is currently wading through DiCaprio territory – always the bridesmaid, never the bride. In this instance though, he’s been nominated for a third time for Best Actor, this time, of course, for his performance in Marty Supreme, but will he finally cinch it? He’s up against Leo himself, as well as the aforementioned Michael B. Jordan, and Ethan Hawke and Wagner Moura.
Who missed out on a nomination?
We’re obviously completely unbiased, but we are Team Paul Mescal in this house, so it was gutting to see him just miss out on a nomination for Best Actor in his performance as Willy Shakes himself in Hamnet.
Still, there was plenty of incredibly deserving love for Hamnet elsewhere. Jessie Buckley is surely a shoe-in for the Best Actress award, while Chloé Zhao has scooped up a Best Director nomination (hell yes, women directors!) and Hamnet finds itself in the Best Picture category.
Another snub that astonished a lot of film journalists was newcomer Chase Infiniti in the Best Actress category for One Battle After Another. Still, for a first outing playing Leonardo DiCaprio’s daughter and earning plenty of award season buzz, it’s not been a bad time for her at all.
The biggest snub of all is surely Wicked: For Good, though, which didn’t get a look in. While we were gripped by Ozian fever last year – and the first Wicked film picked up 10 nominations last year – there wasn’t a single munchkin crumb left for Jon M. Chu’s part two.
But the Wicked soundtrack has been nominated for a Grammy this year, so they’ve got that going for them.
Girl power carries If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Song Sung Blue, and Weapons to the Oscars
Doing it for the girls, these women picked up the only Oscar nods for If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Song Sung Blue, and Weapons.
Sitting in the Best Actress category, Rose Bryne gets her first ever nomination at the Academy Awards for the former, while Kate Hudson has been recognised for the first time since 2001 for Song Sung Blue.
Meanwhile in the Best Supporting Actress category, Amy Madigan picks up a nomination for Zach Cregger’s horror Weapons. Considering the horror genre is usually fairly underrepresented during awards season, between Madigan’s nomination and Sinners otherwise dominating, maybe this is a good omen for the genre being taken more seriously in the future.
There’s a new category on the block
For the first time since 2001 when Best Animated Film was added to the list of categories awarded at the Oscars, a new category has been added to the roster for the night. And that’s Best Casting. This is awarded to the casting directors who, right at the start of the filmmaking process, make the final call on who will take on certain roles.
In some ways, it seems bizarre this category hasn’t been included until the year 2026. Every other aspect of the filmmaking process seems to have been catered for at the Oscars (justice for stunt people!) and yet we’re only now getting this category.
Interestingly, Sentimental Value’s casting directors Avy Kaufman and Yngvill Kolset Haga were absent from the list of nominees, which is more peculiar still given the cast itself picked up awards in all the acting categories.
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