Paul Thomas Anderson’s Epic One Battle After Another Dominates the 98th Academy Awards by Winning Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor for Sean Penn, and the First-Ever Academy Award for Best Casting While Michael B. Jordan Claims Best Actor for Sinners and Jessie Buckley Takes Best Actress for Hamnet at the Dolby Theatre Ceremony on March 15, 2026…
The 98th Academy Awards Winners 2026 were announced on Sunday, March 15, 2026 at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood with Paul Thomas Anderson’s sprawling action epic One Battle After Another emerging as the night’s biggest winner, taking home Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, and the ceremony’s historic first-ever Best Casting award.
Sinners, Ryan Coogler’s supernatural Southern Gothic thriller, mounted the strongest competition of the night winning Best Actor for Michael B. Jordan, Best Cinematography for Autumn Durald Arkapaw, and multiple additional technical categories while Hamnet claimed Best Actress for Jessie Buckley in one of the evening’s most celebrated individual performances.
The 2026 ceremony broadcast from the Dolby Theatre brought an end to one of the most competitive Oscar seasons in recent memory, with Sinners and One Battle After Another entering the night as frontrunners in a field that included Timothée Chalamet’s Marty Supreme, Yorgos Lanthimos’s Bugonia, and Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein.
Best Picture Goes to One Battle After Another
Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another claimed the night’s top prize, confirming its status as the critical and industry favourite heading into the ceremony. The film’s producers Adam Somner, Sara Murphy, and Paul Thomas Anderson accepted the award on stage at the Dolby Theatre. The win made Anderson the definitive auteur of the 98th ceremony, becoming the first filmmaker in years to take both Best Picture and Best Director in the same night with such commanding momentum across multiple categories.
Full Winners List: 98th Academy Awards 2026
Top Acting and Directing Categories
Craft and Technical Categories
| Category | Winner | Film |
|---|---|---|
| Best Cinematography | Autumn Durald Arkapaw | Sinners |
| Best Costume Design | Ruth E. Carter | Sinners |
| Best Animated Short Film | The Girl Who Cried Pearls | Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski |
Michael B. Jordan’s Historic Best Actor Win
Michael B. Jordan’s Best Actor win for Sinners marks one of the most celebrated individual victories of the 2026 ceremony, confirming a remarkable awards campaign that saw the actor outperform Timothée Chalamet (Marty Supreme), Leonardo DiCaprio (One Battle After Another), Ethan Hawke (Blue Moon), and Wagner Moura (The Secret Agent) in a fiercely competitive field.
Jordan played the dual role of twin brothers Elijah “Smoke” Moore and Elias “Stack” Moore in Ryan Coogler’s Sinners a technically and emotionally demanding performance that required him to play two distinct characters sharing scenes together through cutting-edge visual effects. His win drew immediate widespread celebration across social media platforms and became one of the most discussed moments of the ceremony.
Jessie Buckley Wins Best Actress for Hamnet
British-Irish actress Jessie Buckley claimed the Best Actress award for her portrayal of Agnes Shakespeare the wife of playwright William Shakespeare in Sam Mendes’s Hamnet, the adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s acclaimed historical novel. Buckley defeated Rose Byrne (If I Had Legs I’d Kick You), Kate Hudson (Song Sung Blue), Renate Reinsve (Sentimental Value), and Emma Stone (Bugonia) to take the award. Her win cements Hamnet as the leading British film of the 2026 Oscar cycle, pairing her individual triumph with the film’s additional nominations in Best Picture, Best Director (Chloé Zhao), and Best Costume Design.
Sinners Wins Big Despite Losing Best Picture
Ryan Coogler’s Sinners entered the ceremony as the co-frontrunner alongside One Battle After Another and departed as a multiple winner taking Best Actor for Michael B. Jordan, Best Cinematography for Autumn Durald Arkapaw, and Best Costume Design for Ruth E. Carter.
The supernatural thriller set in the Jim Crow South drew widespread critical acclaim for its visual ambition, original storytelling, and performances with Wunmi Mosaku also having been nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her work in the film. Sinners remains one of the most culturally significant films of 2025’s theatrical year regardless of its Best Picture outcome, with its Oscars haul confirming its technical and performative excellence.
The First-Ever Best Casting Oscar
One of the 98th ceremony’s historic firsts was the introduction of the Academy Award for Best Casting a category the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences approved in recent years following sustained industry advocacy for recognising the often-overlooked craft of assembling a film’s performing ensemble. The inaugural Best Casting award went to the casting directors of One Battle After Another, adding yet another trophy to Paul Thomas Anderson’s dominant night at the Dolby Theatre.
Best Animated Feature Nominees
The Best Animated Feature category featured Arco, Elio, KPop Demon Hunters, Little Amélie or the Character of Rain, and Zootopia 2 the winner in this category is not publicly confirmed in available results at time of publication.
International and Documentary Categories
The Best International Feature Film category shortlisted It Was Just an Accident (France), The Secret Agent (Brazil), Sentimental Value (Norway), Sirāt (Spain), and The Voice of Hind Rajab (Tunisia). Among documentary features, The Alabama Solution, Come See Me in the Good Light, Cutting Through Rocks, Mr Nobody Against Putin, and The Perfect Neighbor competed for the award. Confirmed winners in these categories are not publicly disclosed in available sources at time of publication.
The Night’s Key Nominees Who Did Not Win
Several headline performances and films left the Dolby Theatre without a winner’s Oscar despite nominations in major categories:
- Timothée Chalamet (Marty Supreme) — Best Actor nominee; the film was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director (Josh Safdie), and Best Costume Design
- Leonardo DiCaprio (One Battle After Another) — nominated Best Actor despite his film winning Best Picture
- Emma Stone (Bugonia) — nominated Best Actress after producing the film alongside Yorgos Lanthimos
- Jacob Elordi (Frankenstein) — nominated Best Supporting Actor for playing The Creature
- Chloé Zhao (Hamnet) — nominated Best Director; did not win despite the film claiming Best Actress
Did the right films and performances win, or did your personal pick for Best Picture, Best Actor, or Best Actress go home empty-handed tonight? Drop your full ballot and your biggest Oscar surprise in the comments below.
