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Oscars 2026 Guide: Predictions, Nominees & How to Watch

Frontier Affairs

By Senior Entertainment Correspondent | Los Angeles | March 15, 2026 | Sources: Oscars.org, Variety, ABC News, Al Jazeera, Rotten Tomatoes, TV Insider, Wikipedia

Key Highlights

TONIGHT: The 98th Academy Awards — Sunday, March 15, 2026 — 7:00pm ET / 4:00pm PT — Dolby Theatre, Ovation Hollywood, Los Angeles.
Time to watch: Live on ABC and streaming on Hulu. Red carpet coverage begins at 3:30pm PT on ABC; El red carpet begins at 2:00pm ET.
Host: Conan O'Brien returns for his second consecutive year. Theme: 'Humanity' — celebrating human touch, human connection, and 'actual intelligence, not artificial intelligence.'

Record-breaker: Sinners received 16 Oscar nominations — the most in Academy Awards history, surpassing Titanic, La La Land, and All About Eve (14 each). Warner Bros. earned 30 nominations total, tying its own 2005 record.
Best Picture race: Sinners vs One Battle After Another — the tightest race in decades after Sinners won the SAG-AFTRA ensemble prize on March 1, upsetting Paul Thomas Anderson's previous dominance.
Best Actor: Michael B. Jordan leads predictions for Sinners after the SAG upset. Timothée Chalamet (Marty Supreme) and Leonardo DiCaprio (One Battle After Another) remain in contention.
Best Actress: Jessie Buckley for Hamnet is the near-consensus pick. Emma Stone (Best Picture nominee Bugonia) and Kate Hudson (Song Sung Blue) are also nominated.
Historic potential: A Sinners Best Picture win would mark the first Best Picture Oscar won by a Black female producer in Academy history.
New category: Best Casting makes its debut — the first new competitive Oscar category introduced since Best Animated Feature in 2001.
Performers: Miles Caton and Raphael Saadiq perform 'I Lied to You' (Sinners) with Misty Copeland; Eric Glass, Brittany Howard, Waxoazy, Bobby Rush, and more. EJAE, Audrey Nuna, and Rei Ami perform 'Golden' (KPop Demon Hunters).
Presenters include: Robert Downey Jr., Nicole Kidman, Dami Moore, Pedro Pascal, Anna Hathaway, Maya Rudolph, and Priyanka Chopra Jonas, among many others.
Surprises promised: Bridesmaids cast reunion, a Marvel reunion, and an 'extraterrestrial' surprise on stage.

Oscars 2026: Tonight Is the 98th Academy Awards Everything You Need to Know

The Oscars 2026 ceremony kicks off tonight at 7:00pm ET / 4:00pm PT, as Hollywood descends on the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles for the 98th Academy Awards and the entertainment world has not been this genuinely uncertain about a Best Picture winner in years. Two films have dominated the entire awards season, splitting prizes across the circuit in a way that has even seasoned industry veterans reaching for historical comparisons they struggle to find. Furthermore, global search interest in the Oscars 2026 has spiked sharply in the past 48 hours, with Google Trends showing the ceremony among the top five trending topics worldwide as of March 15 morning.

You can watch the full ceremony live on ABC and streaming on Hulu. For the official nominees list and category-by-category breakdown, the Academy’s own website at oscars.org provides the definitive, continuously updated resource. Red carpet coverage on E! begins at 2:00pm ET, with the official ABC red carpet show hosted by Jesse Palmer and Tamron Hall beginning at 6:30pm ET / 3:30pm PT.

Conan O’Brien returns as host for his second consecutive year. At a press conference this week, O’Brien was characteristically self-deprecating: ‘This year, I know where the doughnuts are.’ His writing team, he told ABC News’s Lara Spencer, has been working until the final days, keeping material as current as possible. ‘What’s happening in the world will be reflected in the show,’ he said a line that carries particular weight given the backdrop of the ongoing Iran war dominating global headlines.

The Theme: 'Humanity' And a Statement Against AI

This year’s creative theme was announced by executive producers Raj Kapoor and Katy Mullan as ‘humanity.’ Music director Michael Bearden described the show’s philosophy as celebrating ‘human touch, human connection, and actual intelligence, not artificial intelligence’ a statement that positions the Academy squarely against the AI disruption narrative that has dominated Hollywood’s off-screen conversations for the past two years.

The ceremony will feature reunions of the Bridesmaids cast and the Marvel cinematic universe, as well as what producers have teased only as an ‘extraterrestrial’ surprise on stage. British comedian Amelia Dimoldenberg returns for her third year as the official Oscars social media correspondent. Matt Berry from What We Do in the Shadows serves as announcer.

Sinners: 16 Nominations and a Shot at History

The story of the 98th Oscars begins and ends with Sinners. Ryan Coogler’s horror epic set in 1932 Mississippi and starring Michael B. Jordan in a dual role received 16 Oscar nominations, the most in Academy Awards history. It shattered the previous record of 14, held jointly by All About Eve (1950), Titanic (1997), and La La Land (2016). The film broke the record for the most Black individuals nominated for a single film in Academy history, with ten nominees.

Consequently, Sinners arrives tonight as more than a front-runner. It is a cultural moment. A Best Picture victory for Sinners would deliver the first Oscar for Best Picture to a Black female producer in the Academy’s 98-year history. Additionally, Coogler himself could become the first Black director to win the directing Oscar since the category’s inception, should he prevail over Paul Thomas Anderson.

The film’s studio, Warner Bros. Pictures, earned 30 nominations total across all films in contention tying the studio’s own record set in 2005. For Variety’s awards team, the lead prediction for Best Picture is Sinners. The Gold Derby consensus agrees. Yet nothing in this race is settled.

The SAG-AFTRA Upset That Changed Everything

For most of awards season, One Battle After Another Paul Thomas Anderson’s hyperkinetic, Radiohead-scored drama starring Leonardo DiCaprio looked destined for Best Picture. It dominated the guild circuit, earned critics’ group prizes, and arrived at the SAG-AFTRA Awards on March 1 as the heavy favourite.

Then Sinners won the Best Ensemble Cast prize the SAG Award most predictive of the Best Picture Oscar. In modern Oscar history, the SAG ensemble winner has been the Best Picture winner more often than not. That single result reshuffled every prediction model in the industry. Furthermore, multiple Variety sources reported that Oscar voters were privately telling awards editors: ‘He’ll get one when he’s older’ a sentiment that also shifted the Best Actor race away from Timothée Chalamet and toward Michael B. Jordan.

Full Predictions: The Big Six Categories Tonight

Here are the leading predictions for tonight’s major categories, drawn from the consensus of Variety Awards Circuit, Rotten Tomatoes, Gold Derby, and Entertainment Now as of March 15, 2026:

Best Picture: Sinners Warner Bros.

Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson One Battle After Another

Best Actor: Michael B. Jordan Sinners

Best Actress: Jessie Buckley Hamnet

Best Supporting Actor: Delroy Lindo Sinners

Best Supporting Actress: Teyana Taylor One Battle After Another

Best Animated Feature: KPop Demon Hunters Annapurna Pictures

Best International Film: Sentimental Value Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas / Norway

Best Original Screenplay: Sinners Ryan Coogler

Best Adapted Screenplay: One Battle After Another Paul Thomas Anderson

Best Original Score: Sinners Ludwig Göransson

Note: Rotten Tomatoes live winners page began updating from the ceremony’s start. Best Supporting Actress may be the night’s most competitive race Amy Madigan (Weapons), Wunmi Mosaku (Sinners), and Teyana Taylor (One Battle After Another) each have credible cases.

Best Actor: The Race That Flipped Twice

Timothée Chalamet began the season as the prohibitive Best Actor favourite for his role as table tennis prodigy Marty Mauser in Marty Supreme, taking home the Golden Globe and the Critics Choice Award. However, he lost at BAFTA and most critically at SAG, where the award went to Michael B. Jordan for Sinners.

Voters anonymously told Variety: ‘He’ll get one when he’s older.’ Jordan, 38, is consequently the current consensus favourite. Leonardo DiCaprio (One Battle After Another) remains a factor, as does Ethan Hawke in an undisclosed role. However, the momentum is firmly with Jordan and, by extension, Sinners.

New This Year: Best Casting Makes Its Debut

The 98th Oscars introduces a brand-new competitive category: Best Casting the first new Oscar since Best Animated Feature debuted in 2001. The Academy announced the category in February 2024, and four of its five inaugural nominees publicly celebrated the recognition at a February 2026 panel discussion. It is a 25-year milestone in the Academy’s history and finally gives formal recognition to one of filmmaking’s most influential and least-acknowledged disciplines.

Musical Performances: A Tribute to Black Artistry and K-Pop

Two Original Song performances will define the musical dimension of tonight’s ceremony — and both tell larger cultural stories.

Miles Caton and songwriter Raphael Saadiq will perform ‘I Lied to You’ from Sinners a song Caton delivered inside the film itself as a young blues musician in 1932. The performance will serve as a full tribute to Black artistry across generations and musical genres. Joining Caton and Saadiq on stage will be ballerina Misty Copeland, rockers Brittany Howard and Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram, blues legends Bobby Rush and Eric Gales, jazz artist Alice Smith, country star Shaboozey, and Sinners co-stars Buddy Guy and Jack White. It is, by any measure, the most ambitious live musical production in Oscar ceremony history.

Additionally, EJAE, Audrey Nuna, and Rei Ami will perform ‘Golden’ from KPop Demon Hunters bringing the global K-pop phenomenon to the Academy Awards stage for what producers are describing as a celebration of cinema’s international reach. Further performers include Josh Groban.

How to Watch the Oscars 2026 Full Broadcast Guide

The 98th Academy Awards airs live tonight, Sunday, March 15, 2026:

Main ceremony: ABC and Hulu — 7:00pm ET / 4:00pm PT
E! red carpet coverage: E! — from 2:00pm ET (hosted by Justin Sylvester and Keltie Knight)
Official ABC red carpet: ABC — 6:30pm ET / 3:30pm PT (Jesse Palmer and Tamron Hall)
Streaming without cable: Hulu + Live TV, YouTube TV, FuboTV, AT&T TV
ABC app / ABC.com: Available with cable subscription sign-in
International: Check local listings — the ceremony begins at 23:00 GMT
After-party coverage: E! — 10:30pm ET / 9:30pm PT — ‘After Party: Oscars 2026’

For the complete, official nominees list across all 24 categories, visit the Academy’s official ceremony page at oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/2026 updated in real time as winners are announced throughout the evening.

Conclusion: Oscars 2026 Is the Night Sinners Could Rewrite History

The Oscars 2026 ceremony is not just Hollywood’s biggest night it is potentially one of the most historically significant evenings in the Academy’s 98-year history. Sinners enters with a record 16 nominations, the backing of the SAG-AFTRA ensemble prize, and the opportunity to deliver the first Best Picture Oscar to a Black female producer. One Battle After Another enters with the critical consensus and Paul Thomas Anderson’s directing artistry. And a race that looked settled two weeks ago is now genuinely, thrillingly open.

Furthermore, tonight’s ceremony carries cultural weight beyond the competition. The theme of ‘humanity’ and the Sinners performance tribute to Black musical artistry across generations position the 98th Oscars as a statement ceremony one that Conan O’Brien, the performers, and the Academy itself appear determined to make resonate beyond the Dolby Theatre. Whether Sinners sweeps, splits, or loses to One Battle After Another, the Oscars 2026 will be remembered. Tune in tonight at 7:00pm ET on ABC and Hulu.