2026 Oscars Predictions: Who Will Win—And Who Should Win?

It’s that time of the year again. Oscars season is upon us, which means its time to bluff our way through a conversation with the Office Oscars Expert (there’s always one), and maybe even fill out the annual Oscars tip-sheet. Never fear. If you don’t know your Hamnet from Hamlet, we sat down with veteran film critic and comedian Alexei Toliopoulos to break down the 2026 Academy Award favourites.

And look, the TL;DR on this one if that the big categories are likely to come down to Ryan Coogler’s juke-joint vampire flick, Sinners, vs One Battle After Another, an industry darling by Paul Thomas Anderson, about a very 2026-style US modern revolutionary roadtrip.

But as Toliopoulos tells us, 2025 was a great year for film, and the Oscars Class of 2026—from Sinners to Sentimental Value, and Marty Supreme to Train Dreams is among the strongest in recent memory.

“It’s been a pretty interesting year for film, 2025,” says Toliopoulos, whose show, appropriately titled VHS, is on sale now. “The highs were really high and pretty consistent. When I look at all the big nominations, I think that represents some really, really great films. For the most part, films that will stand the test of time.”

So, let’s dive in, these are the films that will win—and should win— at the 2026 Academy Awards, according to film critic and comedian Alexei Toliopoulos.

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2026 Oscars Predictions by Category

Best Picture

Nominees:

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

Who will win: “It’s a race between two films currently, which would be One Battle After Another and Sinners. I think it can fall either way and they’re two of my favourite films of the year, so it’s hard to say.”

Who should win: “I’m probably going to pin it to One Battle After Another for both should and will if I have to. I think One Battle After Another is just a spectacularly made film that feels really right, really current, and it’s getting enough of those precursor-type awards where it feels as close to a lock as you can get.”

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Best Director

Nominees:

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

Who will win: Paul Thomas Anderson.

Who should win: “Paul Thomas Anderson. He is one of the great filmmakers. He’s yet to be awarded by the Academy. He’s just won the Directors Guild Award, which is a very similar voting pool to the Academy. So I think it’s safe bet and it’s like, you know, wouldn’t it be great to see one of the great filmmakers win in their prime and win for maybe the best film he’s ever made? You know, that feels exceedingly rare.”

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Best Actor in a Leading Role

Nominees:

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

Who will win: “Timothée Chalamet’s running a really great campaign. He’s amazing in Marty Supreme. But I’m kind of leaning more towards Ethan Hawke winning for Blue Moon. The Academy has a real history of seeing these up-and-coming actors and not giving them an award early on. Timothée Chalamet might have one of those storylines like that, if he gets this award for Marty Supreme that’d be fantastic. But Ethan Hawke is another great actor who’s never won an Oscar. So he has like the inverse of that story where it’s just like this great actor, everybody loves him, he’s working with his key collaborator with Richard Linklater, and it feels like that kind of thing that could just sneak through and happen to award someone so beloved and give him an award.”

Who should win: “Michael B. Jordan in Sinners. That’s a really exciting genre performance.”

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Best Actress in a Leading Role

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

Who will win: “I think that it probably most likely the award will go to Jessie Buckley for Hamnet. Which is also is a spectacular performance in a very, very emotionally affective film.”

Who should win: “This is probably my favourite performance of the year, Rose Byrne in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.”

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Best Supporting Actor

Nominees:

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

Who will win: “I think Stellan Skarsgard will win for Sentimental Value.”

Who should win: “Delroy Lindo for Sinners. I love Delroy Lindo, he’s been one of my favorite actors for my entire life really, especially his work with Spike Lee. And I think he’s just so magnetic in Sinners. Great, work and a true supporting performance.”

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Best Supporting Actress

Nominees:

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

Who will win: “I’m going to go for Teyana Taylor for One Battle After Another. Great, great performance. Just to have this incredible physical presence, this excellent kind of sense of movement and controlling space as that character. I just think it’s one of those performances that’s… I don’t know how to put it, but just really exciting to see, especially for people that maybe haven’t seen her before or have not seen her act in something like this before.”

Who should win: “I think this is the best lineup, the coolest category, a historically cool lineup. Should Could be anyone. I think all those five performances are so cool and exciting.”

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Original Screenplay

Nominees:

• Blue Moon – Robert Kaplow
• It Was Just an Accident – Jafar Panahi (with Nader Saïvar, Shadmehr Rastin, and Mehdi Mahmoudian)
• Marty Supreme – Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie
• Sentimental Value – Eskil Vogt and Joachim Trier
• Sinners – Ryan Coogler

Who will win: “Sinners. Great screenplay, original in many ways, but also just an acute sense of the way genre communicates to an audience and the way that audiences interpret and understand genre.”

Who should win: “It Was Just an Accident by Jafar Panahi. It’s an incredibly balanced script with really interesting humour, but also the plot of a great taut thriller. It Was Just an Accident is like my favourite movie of the entire decade so far. I just adore that film.”

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Adapted Screenplay

Nominees:

• Bugonia – Will Tracy
• Frankenstein – Guillermo del Toro
• Hamnet – Chloé Zhao and Maggie O’Farrell
• One Battle After Another – Paul Thomas Anderson
• Train Dreams – Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar

Who will win: “One Battle After Another. Great screenplay, so exciting.”

Who should win: “Leaning more to Train Dreams because I just thought that was a really special film. And I think that it is an interesting take on adaptation of the novella Train Dreams.”

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Animated Feature Film

Nominees:

• Arco
• Elio
• KPop Demon Hunters
• Little Amélie or the Character of Rain
• Zootopia 2 (also cited as Zootropolis 2)

Who will win: “I think it’s K-Pop Demon Hunters for sure. Like what a sensation, right?”

Who should win: “K-Pop Demon Hunters has become an undeniable sensation this year. I hear the song every time I leave my house.”

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International Feature Film

Nominees:

• Brazil – The Secret Agent
• France – It Was Just an Accident
• Norway – Sentimental Value
• Spain – Sirât
• Tunisia – The Voice of Hind Rajab

Who will win: “The Secret Agent. Brazil has done very well in this category in the recent past, and seeing it be nominated for Best Picture is a good sign too.”

Who should win: “It Was Just an Accident by Jafar Panahi. I think is the best film of 2025 and best film of the 2020s.”

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Documentary Feature

Nominees:

• The Alabama Solution
• Come See Me in the Good Light
• Cutting Through Rocks
• Mr. Nobody Against Putin
• The Perfect Neighbor

Who will win: The Perfect Neighbor

Who should win: “The Perfect Neighbor. It’s a great documentary that’s interesting in its form, connected me with a lot, it’s really accessible in that it’s on Netflix, so basically anyone in the world can watch it.”

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Casting (New Category)

Nominees:

• Hamnet
• Marty Supreme
• One Battle After Another
• The Secret Agent
• Sinners

Who will win: “Maybe I would lean towards putting my money down on Sinners, but it’s new category, so it’s hard to predict the way that it will be voted in.”

Who should win: “For me, the should win for that would be Marty Supreme. Because Jennifer Venditti who is the who is casting for that film, I think she’s done an incredible job.”

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Cinematography

• Dan Laustsen – Frankenstein
• Darius Khondji – Marty Supreme
• Michael Bauman – One Battle After Another
• Autumn Durald Arkapaw – Sinners
• Adolpho Veloso – Train Dreams

Who will win: Sinners

Who should win: “Sinners is beautifully shot, great like just impeccably shot, very, very deserving the award.”

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Visual Effects

Nominees:

• Avatar: Fire and Ash
• F1
• Jurassic World Rebirth
• The Lost Bus
• Sinners

Who will win: Avatar: Fire and Ash

Who should win: “Sinners, because I think they do interesting stuff with the visual effects, but Avatar‘s pretty undeniable.”

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Film Editing

Nominees:

• F1
• Marty Supreme
• One Battle After Another
• Sentimental Value
• Sinners

Who will win: “F1 just feels like the kind of movie that wins on a lot of technical awards.”

Who should win: “One Battle After Another, because I just think it is supremely well edited. It’s a film that just has you on the hook and I think a lot of that is to do with the pacing.”

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Production Design

Nominees:

• Frankenstein (Tamara Deverell and Shane Vieau)
• Hamnet (Fiona Crombie and Alice Felton)
• Marty Supreme (Jack Fisk and Adam Willis)
• One Battle After Another (Florencia Martin)
• Sinners (Hannah Beachler and Monique Champagne)

Who will win: “Frankenstein. It’s the kind of film that wins these awards.”

Who should win: “Hamnet does a really good job of kind of threading this needle between cinematic and a theatrical experience, and I think a lot of that comes through in the production design.”

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Costume Design

Nominees:

• Avatar: Fire and Ash
• Frankenstein
• Hamnet
• Marty Supreme
• Sinners

Who will win: “Frankenstein”

Who should win: “Frankenstein. I love the way Jacob Elordi looks as the monster, that’s a great take on that character.”

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Makeup and Hairstyling

Nominees:

• Frankenstein
• Kokuho
• Sinners
• The Smashing Machine
• The Ugly Stepsister

Who will win: Sinners

Who should win: Sinners

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Sound

Nominees:

• F1
• Frankenstein
• One Battle After Another
• Sinners
• Sirât

Who will win: “I think the ‘will win’ is F1 because it’s kind of like that technical film that wins those kind of awards.”

Who should win: “Surat is really exciting to be nominated in there, and the sound in Surat is just wonderful.”

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Original Score

Nominees:

• Jerskin Fendrix – Bugonia
• Alexandre Desplat – Frankenstein
• Max Richter – Hamnet
• Jonny Greenwood – One Battle After Another
• Ludwig Göransson – Sinners

Who will win: “Ludwig Göransson for Sinners.”

Who should win: “Jonny Greenwood for One Battle After Another. I think that’s just one of the best scores I’ve heard in some time.”

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Original Song

Nominees:

• “Dear Me” (Diane Warren: Relentless)
• “Golden” (KPop Demon Hunters)
• “I Lied To You” (Sinners)
• “Sweet Dreams of Joy” (Viva Verdi!)
• “Train Dreams” (Train Dreams)

Who will win: KPop Demon Hunters

Who should win: “KPop Demon Hunters. A no-brainer.”

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Animated Short Film

Nominees:

• Butterfly
• Forevergreen
• The Girl Who Cried Pearls
• Retirement Plan
• The Three Sisters

Who will win: The Girl Who Cried Pearls

Who should win: The Girl Who Cried Pearls

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Documentary Short Film

Nominees:

• All the Empty Rooms
• Armed Only with a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud
• Children No More: Were and Are Gone
• The Devil Is Busy
• Perfectly a Strangeness

Who will win: All the Empty Rooms

Who should win: All the Empty Rooms

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Live Action Short Film

Nominees:

• Butcher’s Stain
• A Friend of Dorothy
• Jane Austen’s Period Drama
• The Singers
• Two People Exchanging Saliva

Who will win: The Singers

Who should win: The Singers

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How to Watch The Oscars in Australia

The 2025 Oscars can be watched live in Australia on Channel 7 and streamed via 7plus on Monday, 3 March 2025. Coverage begins with Sunrise and The Morning Show at 5:30 am AEDT, followed by the Red Carpet Show at 10:30 am AEDT, and the main ceremony at 11:00 am AEDT.

• Channel: Channel 7 / 7plus
• Date: Monday, 3 March 2026
• Time: 11:00 am AEDT

VHS, by Alexei Toliopoulos

Alexei Toliopoulos simply adores cinema, films, movies and the techniques filmmakers use to elicit emotions from an audience. He has sacrificed everything to be one of the most respected movie minds in the country. Pop the tape into the VCR and join Alexei as he takes you on an adventure in movie watching, charting through the genre films that made him the tragic film obsessive he was destined to become.
 
You know Alexei from Guy Montgomery’s Guy Mont-Spelling Bee, The Cheap Seats, Question Everything, The Weekly, his comedy investigations FINDING DRAGO/FINDING YEEZUS, his podcast THE LAST VIDEO STORE and from last year’s festival hit REFUSED CLASSIFICATION with Zachary Ruane.