Oscars 2026 Are Tonight: Sinners Makes History With Record 16 Nominations, One Battle After Another Follows With 13
Hollywood's biggest night is hours away. The 98th Academy Awards ceremony begins tonight — Sunday, March 15 — at 7 p.m. ET at the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood, hosted by Conan O'Brien for the second consecutive year. Ryan Coogler's Sinners enters as the most-nominated film in Oscar history, and the 10-film Best Picture race is one of the most competitive in years.
When Are the 2026 Oscars and How to Watch
The 98th Oscars ceremony takes place tonight, March 15, at 7 p.m. ET / 4 p.m. PT. It airs on ABC and streams live on Hulu, ABC.com, the ABC app, YouTube TV, FuboTV, and DirecTV Stream. Tamron Hall and Jesse Palmer host the pre-show.
Sinners Breaks the All-Time Nominations Record
Sinners leads all films with a record 16 nominations — the most ever for a single movie, surpassing the previous record of 14 shared by All About Eve, Titanic, and La La Land. The Ryan Coogler horror film set in 1930s Mississippi earned nods for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Michael B. Jordan — his first nomination — and Best Original Screenplay, among others.
The film also broke the record for most Black individuals nominated for a single film at ten. Warner Bros. Pictures earned 30 nominations total, tying its own record set in 2005.
One Battle After Another and the Full Best Picture Field
Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another follows with 13 nominations. The screwball epic stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a washed-up revolutionary living off-grid with his daughter, and Rotten Tomatoes calls it Anderson's most entertaining film yet while also one of his most thematically rich.
The complete 10-film Best Picture lineup: Sinners, One Battle After Another, Hamnet, Marty Supreme, F1 The Movie, Train Dreams, The Secret Agent, Frankenstein, Bugonia, and Sentimental Value.
The Acting Races: DiCaprio vs. Jordan vs. Chalamet
Best Actor nominees include Timothée Chalamet for Marty Supreme, Leonardo DiCaprio for One Battle After Another, and Michael B. Jordan for Sinners. Wagner Moura (The Secret Agent) and Joel Edgerton (Train Dreams) round out the category.
Best Actress nominees include Jessie Buckley for Hamnet, Emma Stone for Bugonia, and Renate Reinsve for Sentimental Value. First-time acting nominees this year include Jacob Elordi (Frankenstein), Delroy Lindo and Wunmi Mosaku (Sinners), and Teyana Taylor (One Battle After Another).
A New Category Debuts Tonight
This year marks the debut of the Academy Award for Best Casting — the first new competitive Oscar category in decades, bringing the total number of competitive categories to 24. The inaugural nominees include Sinners, One Battle After Another, Marty Supreme, Hamnet, and The Secret Agent.
Performers, Tributes, and Surprises Planned
Miles Caton and Raphael Saadiq will perform "I Lied to You" from Sinners, joined on stage by Misty Copeland, Brittany Howard, Christone "Kingfish" Ingram, Shaboozey, Bobby Rush, and others in what producers described as a larger homage to the film.
The night will include a Bridesmaids cast reunion, a Marvel reunion, and what producers are calling an "extraterrestrial" surprise on stage. Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan are set to honor director Rob Reiner, who died in December 2025.
O'Brien told reporters this week: "We've been working hard with my writers — some things are a little more ambitious than last year. We'll see how it goes."
The 98th Academy Awards are live tonight on ABC and Hulu starting at 7 p.m. ET.
