Oscars 2026 predictions: who will win Best Picture, Best Director, and the major acting awards?

The Oscars 2026 are rapidly approaching and, now that this year's nominations are out in the wild, it's time to start predicting the winners when the stars flock to Los Angeles' Dolby Theatre in March.

Of course, these awards shows are never a sure thing, and that often especially applies to the Oscars. Last year, sex worker comedy-drama Anora emerged as a wildcard winner in the Best Picture category, beating historical epic frontrunner The Brutalist, with surprise victories for director Sean Baker and star Mikey Madison, too. Still, we've looked at historical precedence and the state of the industry (and our own opinions) to give our best guesses for the 2026 Oscar winners.

But should we expect a sweep for One Battle After Another or Sinners? Without further ado, these are our predictions for the biggest categories at the Oscars 2026: Best Picture, Best Director, and the four acting categories.

Oscars 2026 predictions

Best Picture

The nominees:

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

Now, the key predictor for the Oscars' Best Picture winner is the PGA (Producers Guild of America) Awards, but that ceremony isn't taking place for another month. In the meantime, we think it's going to be a close call between One Battle After Another and Sinners. Our best bet, though, is that One Battle After Another will take home the big prize on the night.

Sinners made history with a record-breaking 16 nominations this year, but we think that the Academy will hold the fact that it's a genre film against it. Plus, director Paul Thomas Anderson has been nominated for nine Oscars over the course of his career (12, if you include this year's nods) and has yet to win, so the Academy may well think that 2026 is his year, thanks to One Battle After Another quickly becoming of the biggest crowd pleasers in his filmography. Of course, it would be cool to see an international feature like The Secret Agent or Sentimental Value win, but we think that's pretty unlikely.

Best Director

The nominees:

• Paul Thomas Anderson (One Battle After Another)*
• Ryan Coogler (Sinners)
• Josh Safdie (Marty Supreme)
• Joachim Trier (Sentimental Value)
• Chloé Zhao (Hamnet)

In the majority of cases, the Best Picture and Best Director winners line up, so if One Battle After Another wins the former, Paul Thomas Anderson is extremely likely to take home the latter (over the years, 77% of Best Picture winners that have also been nominated for Best Director have won both awards). That means that if Sinners wins instead, we can expect Ryan Coogler to take home Best Director.

Surprisingly, the only former winner in this list is also the only woman: Chloé Zhao won Best Director for Nomadland back in 2021, making her only the second of three female filmmakers to do so.

Best Actor

The nominees:

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

Last year, the Golden Globe acting winners almost perfectly foretold the Oscar winners, and we're expecting similar results this year. Timothée Chalamet took home the former for playing ping pong prodigy Marty Mauser in the high-octane Marty Supreme, so he's likely to replicate that win in the Dolby Theatre. He may only be 30, but an Oscar win has been a long time coming for the actor – this is his third Best Actor nomination after being recognized for A Complete Unknown in 2025 and Call Me By Your Name in 2018.

Of course, he may follow the same trajectory as one of his inspirations, Leonardo DiCaprio, who only won after his fifth nomination, 20 years into his career. That could mean DiCaprio takes home his second Oscar this year for playing stoner ex-revolutionary Bob in One Battle After Another, a performance that was equal parts moving and funny in its absurdity. We think Michael B. Jordan could stand a chance to win for Sinners, too, especially if the film misses out on winning Best Picture. Jordan pulled double duty in a dual role as twins Smoke and Stack in the jaw-dropping vampire period horror movie.

Best Actress

The nominees:

• Jessie Buckley (Hamnet)*
• Rose Byrne (If I Had Legs I’d Kick You)
• Kate Hudson (Song Sung Blue)
• Renate Reinsve (Sentimental Value)
• Emma Stone (Bugonia)

Jessie Buckley seems like the obvious winner of Best Actress in 2026. Not only did she already take home the Golden Globe for her standout turn as Agnes in historical heart-wrencher Hamnet, but she gave the sort of powerhouse performance that the Academy tends to love.

Otherwise, Renate Reinsve could be a wildcard winner for playing troubled actor Nora in Sentimental Value – we'd love her to get her flowers, especially after her work in 2021's The Worst Person in the World was largely overlooked, but that may have to wait until another year.

Best Supporting Actor

The nominees:

• Benicio del Toro (One Battle After Another)
• Jacob Elordi (Frankenstein)
• Delroy Lindo (Sinners)
• Sean Penn (One Battle After Another)
• Stellan Skarsgård (Sentimental Value)*

Both supporting categories are full of stiff competition this year, but we reckon Stellan Skarsgård stands a good chance of going home with the golden statuette for his role as past-his-prime filmmaker and absent father Gustav Borg in Sentimental Value. He won the Golden Globe, and last year's winner Kieran Culkin went on to take the Oscar, too. Plus, Skarsgård just puts in a really great supporting turn.

Delroy Lindo's nomination was a very pleasant surprise – he's not been dominating much of the awards conversation for his role as musician Delta Slim in Sinners, but it's a stellar performance. And, maybe this marks some well-overdue recognition from the Academy: it's his first nomination in a career that spans half a century.

Best Supporting Actress

The nominees:

• Elle Fanning (Sentimental Value)
• Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas (Sentimental Value)
• Amy Madigan (Weapons)
• Wunmi Mosaku (Sinners)
• Teyana Taylor (One Battle After Another)*

Teyana Taylor put in an absolutely barnstorming performance as revolutionary and reluctant mother Perfidia Beverly Hills in One Battle After Another, giving us a complicated and nuanced portrait of motherhood that's rarely depicted so sensitively on screen. She seems like the obvious choice for the Best Supporting Actress gong, especially as she took home the Golden Globe earlier this month (Zoe Saldaña won both the Supporting Actress Golden Globe and Oscar in 2025).

It would be pretty groundbreaking for Wunmi Mosaku or Amy Madigan to go home with the award for their performances as Annie and Aunt Gladys in two of last year's biggest horror movies, Sinners and Weapons, but we think Taylor is the most likely winner.

The Oscars 2026 ceremony will take place on Sunday, March 15. For more, check out our guide to the Oscars 2026 nominations list in full.