Oscars 2026 live coverage: All the winners, red carpet, and the 98th Academy Awards' biggest moments – as it happened

When do the Oscars start?

Hello, and welcome to our coverage of the 2026 Academy Awards!

If you're reading this live, there's just over 90 minutes until the Academy Awards kick off. That may come as something of a surprise, as it's actually an hour earlier than usual, due to this year's awards taking place so late in March that daylight saving time has already put the clocks back an hour in the US.

That means the Awards themselves should start at 7pm EDT/4pm PDT/11pm GMT, pending any delays in proceedings, of course. For the time being, the stars have started arriving on the oh-so-glamorous red carpet.

Who will win Best Picture?

This year looks set to be something of a two-horse race in most major categories, with One Battle After Another and Sinners in the running for many of the evening's top prizes, including Best Picture.

In recent years, we've seen presumptive frontrunners emerge in the summer and remain unchallenged all the way until Oscars night – both Oppenheimer in 2024 and Anora in 2025 were hotly tipped favorites from the get-go. The same has been true for Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another, but Sinners' whopping 16 nominations (an Oscar record) and recent wins at the Actor (fka SAG) Awards has many wondering if Ryan Coogler's period vampire movie could go all the way. Only 5-or-so hours till we find out...

Chicken Shop date host (and future rom-com star) Amelia Dimoldenberg is back on official red carpet correspondent duties this year. She's just been chatting to One Piece star Charithra Chandran and, criminally, there wasn't any discussion of Tony Tony Chopper.

Who is hosting and handing out the awards?

With everyone in broad agreement that he did a damn fine job last year, Conan O'Brien is back on hosting duties at this year's Academy Awards. As for the stars set to hand out the prizes, alongside a gaggle of previous winners (including the never-not-sardonic Kieran Culkin), there's set to be a "Marvel reunion", according to executive producer Katy Mullan. Both Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans are confirmed to be handing out prizes, so that seems like a safe bet pairing. Dare we say it, but could an Avengers: Doomsday tease be in the offing?

As for other presenters, according to Deadline, here's who'll be stepping up to the podium for 70ish seconds of awkward banter:

• Javier Bardem
• Chase Infiniti
• Nicole Kidman
• Jimmy Kimmel
• Ewan McGregor
• Demi Moore
• Kumail Nanjiani
• Pedro Pascal
• Bill and Lewis Pullman
• Maya Rudolph
• Channing Tatum
• Sigourney Weaver

T-minus 30 minutes to go!

There's just half an hour until the Academy Awards get underway. With several major categories still wide open (though they may as well engrave Jessie Buckley's Best Actress baldie now), it promises to be a thrilling evening. Keep this page open in your tab for updates throughout the evening, or head over to the Total Film X/Twitter account for live updates seconds after they happen.

The Oscars schedule: when are the awards being given out?

Last year's Academy Awards were a whopping 3 hours and 50 minutes. Could this year's ceremony top the 4-hour mark? It's possible as there's an extra category to consider: Best Casting, which is being handed out for the first time in Oscar history this year. As for the order the awards are set to be handed out in, that's subject to change, but according to Gold Derby, this is how things are currently shaping up:

• Best Supporting Actress
• Best Animated Feature
• Best Animated Short
• Best Costume Design
• Best Makeup & Hairstyling
• Best Casting
• Best Live-Action Short
• Best Supporting Actor
• Best Adapted Screenplay
• Best Original Screenplay
• Best Production Design
• Best Visual Effects
• Best Documentary Short
• Best Documentary Feature
• Best Score
• Best Sound
• Best Film Editing
• Best Cinematography
• Best International Feature
• Best Song
• Best Actor
• Best Actress
• Best Director
• Best Picture

Red carpet arrivals

Sure, there are plenty of immaculately tailored folk, but best dressed on the red carpet this year? That goes to Sinners star Jack O'Connell, who has turned up in vampire fangs in honor of the film's record-breaking number of nominations.

The 2026 Oscars are officially underway!

The Oscars has kicked off with a frankly terrifying Conan O'Brien in Aunt Gladys from Weapons makeup: "I look like Betty Davies with Lupus." Plenty of other films got Conan cameos too, including One Battle After Another, KPop Demon Hunters and Sentimental Value. A promisingly funny start...

Conan O'Brien's opening monologue landed well with the crowd (save for one mid-speech interruption) – Timothée Chalamet's ballet/opera comments, AI, Leo's memes and certain individuals exposed by the Epstein Files(!) were all targets, before O'Brien himself won the night's first award: a mock Best Achievement prize. He was even serenaded by Josh Groban...

Best Supporting Actress

The first actual award of the evening was handed out by Zoe Saldaña to... Amy Madigan, for her unforgettable performance as Aunt Gladys Weapons! That's something of an upset, or at the very least a surprise, with Wunmi Mosaku and Teyana Taylor considered the top contenders for much of awards season. Unfortuantely, Weapons won't be winning any more awards because it wasn't nominated for any (criminally).

The Academy has got ahead of the inevitable move to YouTube jokes with a mid-stream ads skit featuring Jane Lynch. Will Arnet and Channing Tatum are on stage to hand out Best Animated Feature to...

Best Animated Feature

No upsets here, KPop Demon Hunters has won the Oscar for Best Animated Film! It was never a particularly tight race; only Zootopia 2 felt like a realistic contender. Unfortunately, seems the awards-speech police have itchy trigger fingers as the KPop team were played off after what felt like a very reasonable amount of time on stage...

Best Animated Short Film was handed to The Girl Who Cried Pearls by a pair of animated presenters: Lego Batman co-stars Will Arnett and and Channing Tatum!

In the first of two musical performances this evening, Miles Caton and more took to the stage to perform 'I Lied To You' from Sinners, and the audience ate it up. Could we see an upset later this evening in the Best Song category, where KPop Demon Hunters' chart-topper 'Golden' has been the frontrunner for months and months and months?

Best Costume Design

The Devil Wears Prada star Anne Hathaway and Miranda Priestly inspo Anna Wintour are on stage to hand out the award for Best Costume Design, and the winner is... Kate Hawley for Frankenstein! "All our nominations are your nominations [Guillermo del Toro]," says Hawley.

Frankenstein is proving to be something of a force in the technical categories, as the film has also won for Makeup and Hairstyling. Jacob Elordi apparently sat in the makeup chair for 400 hours during filming, so you can't begrude them that one.

Best Casting

A brand new award is up next: Best Casting, which is being handed out for the first time this year. And the inaugural winner is... One Battle After Another casting director Cassandra Kulukundis! That's somewhat unexpected, as Sinners was hotly tipped to win following its ensemble Actor Awards victory.

Fun fact: even without its Best Casting nomination, Sinners' 15 noms would still have made it the most-nominated film in Oscars history, as All About Eve, Titanic and La La Land all had 14.

After Best Live-Action Short, we've got a run of major awards coming up: Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay and Original Screenplay. Here's where the race really heats up...

Kumail Nanjiani is on stage now to hand out the award for Best Live-Action Short. And, incredibly, there's a tie with The Singers and Two People Exchanging Saliva both taking home the prize. This is the first tie since 2013, and only the 7th tie in Academy Awards history. The most noteworthy tie was when Best Actress went to both Katharine Hepburn for The Lion in Winter and Barbra Streisand for Funny Girl in 1968.

Best Supporting Actor

The most recent recipient, Kieran Culkin, has taken the stage to hand out the award for Best Supporting Actor. The prize has gone to Sean Penn for his extraordinary turn as Col. Steven J. Lockjaw in One Battle After Another. Unsurprisingly, Penn wasn't in attendance, with Culkin quipping "Sean Penn couldn't be here this evening, or didn't want to..." Maybe the now three-time winner will give this statuette to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as well.

Are we now in store for a major One Battle After Another sweep? After that surprise Best Casting win, and Penn taking Supporting Actor despite clear indifference to the Academy momentum is clearly on its side.

The screenplay awards are up next. Cap and Iron Man, aka Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr. are on presenting duties, noting that it's the 14-year anniversary of The Avengers (Evans brought Downey a signed copy of the original script, Downey gave Evans his valet ticket...).

And the Oscar goes to... Paul Thomas Anderson for One Battle After Another! Incredibly, it's the legendary filmmaker's first win after 13 previous nominations – long overdue recognition.

As for Original Screenplay, that went to Ryan Coogler for Sinners! Also a first-time winner. Recipient of the biggest reaction of the evening so far, a sincere Coogler spoke at light speed in order to avoid being played off.

These awards went exactly where expected – a big evening for studio Warner Bros. who released both One Battle After Another and Sinners last year. Almost like they should continue to operate as a successful, independent studio instead of being swallowed up...

The extended in memoriam section is up next. Given the titans of the screen who died over the last 12 months – Robert Redford, Diane Keaton, Rob Reiner and Robert Duvall among them – this could justifiably take up half the runtime of the entire show.

Up first was Billy Crystal, who talked through the eclectic and peerless career of Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Singer Reiner, who both died under tragic circumstances late last year. Many of the stars of Reiner's films, including Kiefer Sutherland, Demi Moore, Jerry O'Connell, Christopher Guest, John Cusack and more took the stage for a moving farewell.

Rachel McAdams then stepped up to pay tribute to Diane Keaton, Catherine O'Hara and the women who helped shape the last 60 years at the cinema.

To cap the section off, Robert Redford received a personal memoriam from Barbara Streisand, who recalled how they came to work together in The Way We Were, and their close relationship over the years. "Bob had real backbone, on and off the screen," Streisand noted, before belting out a refrain from The Way We Were's famous title track like it was 1973.

Best Production Design

The Mandalorian and Grogu duo Pedro Pascal and Sigourney Weaver presented Best Production Design (Grogu was in the audience, literally). Continuing the trend of technical domination, the production design team behind Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein took home the film's third prize of the evening.

Best Visual Effects

Surprising precisely no one, Avatar: Fire and Ash has taken home the Best Visual effects Oscar. Given Wētā's work on Avatar is about 10 years ahead of the competition, that's not at all unexpected. An emotional Sigourney Weaver – aka Avatar's Kiri – presented the award... to her own film.

Best Documentary Films

The Best Documentary film categories are being presented by former host of many years, Jimmy Kimmel. Documentary short has gone to All the Empty Rooms, while Documentary Feature went to Mr. Nobody Against Putin! That's a bit of an upset, as The Perfect Neighbor was the favorite going into Oscar night.

Best Score

The cast of Bridesmaids has reunited for the comedy classic's 15th anniversary and to present the Oscar for Best Score. The skit was a bit of a bust, unfortunately, but the winner was a big hit: Ludwig Göransson won his third Academy Award for Sinners, having previously won for Black Panther and Oppenheimer. Could he one day top John Williams' five Oscar wins?

Sound design, meanwhile, goes to F1. Fair to say that F1 had, if not the best, the most sound this year.

Best Film Editing is up next. This could be the evening's most important award, as it's highly predictive of what goes on to be Best Picture winner. Could this be the moment that One Battle After Another or Sinners pulls ahead in the race for the top prize?

Best Film Editing

After awkwardly stumbling through one of the evening's flattest skits, father/son duo Bill Pullman and Lewis Pullman presented the award for Film Editing, which went to... One Battle After Another's Andy Jurgensen. A key win for team One Battle.

Best Cinematography

But don't count Sinners out yet, as Autumn Durald Arkapaw has won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography! It's a major glass-ceiling-smashing moment as Arkapaw is the first woman in the history of the Academy Awards to win the Best Cinematography Oscar. The sight of every woman in the room on their feet could be the defining image of the evening.

Best International Feature

Following a blazingly political introduction from presenter Javier Bardem, Best International Feature goes to... Sentimental Value! As usual, International Feature was a knife fight this year, with The Secret Agent, It Was an Accident, Sirât and The Voice of Hind Rajab all worthy would-be winners. Sentimental Value is unlikely to take home any other awards this evening, despite four acting nominations, but International Feature is a solid consolation prize.

Want more Sentimental Value? Check out our Big Screen Spotlight interviews with Stellan Skarsgård and Elle Fanning.

Best Song

Going home with the Gold is... 'Golden', from KPop Demon Hunters! No surprises there, really, though there were whispers of a Sinners upset. But do you agree with one GamesRadar+ writer that What It Sounds Like is the real anthem to celebrate?

Best Director

"You make a guy really work hard for one of these," quips Paul Thomas Anderson as he accepts the Best Director Academy Award for One Battle After Another – very long overdue recognition for one of the greatest living filmmakers. That One Battle best picture win feels like a lock now...

Best Actor

Best Actor was one of the night's tightest races, but after months of will it be Leo or Timmy, the victor is... Michael B. Jordan for Sinners! While there was some momentum following Jordan's recent Actor Award win, that's still a relatively late surge with few precursor awards to tip off the actual winner on the night. "You gave me opportunity and space to be seen," Jordan says, in recognition of Ryan Coogler, who he's now made five films with.

Best Actress

Now this one's no surprise – Jessie Buckley has taken home the Best Actress Oscar for her gut-wrenching performance as Agnes in Hament. "I dedicate this to the beautiful chaos of a mother's heart," Buckley says, noting, appropriately enough, that it's currently Mother's Day in the UK.

Best Picture

We're finally here, the final award of the evening. And after what felt like a close race, yet was probably anything but, One Battle After Another has walked away with Best Picture. That's six wins for PTA's latest masterpiece, making it the evening's big winner.

And that's a wrap on the 2026 Academy Awards, which clocked in at just over 3.5hrs. I guess those ruthless time limits on speeches paid off this year. Overall, a pretty strong show with no major screw ups (other than the heartbroken expression on winner's faces as they were played off by obnoxiously loud music) and some moments that won't be forgotten in a hurry.

Despite talk of a late Sinners surge that only really came through in Michael B. Jordan's Best Actor win, this was One Battle After Another's night, with the Paul Thomas Anderson film walking away with 6 awards, making it the night's big winner. Thanks for joining us, and until next year, see you at the movies!