Oscars 2026: The Winners, Losers, Surprises and Upsets That Defined the Night

The 98th Academy Awards, held Sunday, March 15, 2026, mostly ended the way the season said they would at the top — but not always in the places people expected underneath. One Battle After Another was the clear big winner, taking Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Supporting Actor and the new Best Casting award for a total of six Oscars. Sinners, which came in with a record 16 nominations, still had a very strong night with four wins, but it also left the Dolby as the film most likely to inspire “wait, only four?” conversations. Conan O’Brien hosted, and the show itself had a steadier, more old-school winners-circle feel than a chaos-night vibe.

The biggest winner, beyond the trophies, was Paul Thomas Anderson. One Battle After Another didn’t just win Best Picture; it gave Anderson his first Oscar after 14 previous nominations, which instantly made the night feel like both a coronation and a release valve. More importantly, the film won the categories that tell you the Academy really loved it: picture, director, screenplay, editing, acting support, and even the inaugural casting prize. This was not a split-decision Best Picture win; it was the Academy saying this was the movie of the year.

The most complicated winner was Sinners. On paper, winning Best Actor for Michael B. Jordan, Original Screenplay for Ryan Coogler, Original Score for Ludwig Göransson, and Cinematography for Autumn Durald Arkapaw is a huge result. Jordan got his first Oscar, Coogler finally got his writing win, and Arkapaw made history as the first woman and first Black person to win that category. But because Sinners arrived with a record 16 nominations and genuine late-race Best Picture buzz, anything short of the top prize was going to read a little like an under-conversion. It won big enough to matter, just not big enough to own the night.

The emotional highlight — and maybe the most crowd-pleasing surprise — was Amy Madigan winning Supporting Actress for Weapons. Pundits knew she had a shot, but it still landed like the kind of Oscar moment people actually watch for: a veteran performer, 40 years removed from her previous nomination, getting her first Academy Award at 75. Jessie Buckley winning Best Actress for Hamnet also felt like one of the night’s cleaner, classier victories, and it carried some history too: AP reported she became the first Irish winner in that category. These were the wins that made the broadcast feel warm instead of just procedural.

As for actual upsets, the big takeaway is that Best Picture was not one of them. TheWrap’s final prediction board had One Battle After Another as the overwhelming favorite and explicitly said a Sinners Best Picture win would be a “massive upset,” so the top award was more confirmation than shock. The real swerves came lower on the ballot. One prominent forecast picked Delroy Lindo for Supporting Actor, but Sean Penn won instead. TheWrap also had The Perfect Neighbor in Documentary Feature, Butterfly in Animated Short, and Two People Exchanging Saliva in Live Action Short; instead, Mr. Nobody Against Putin won documentary, The Girl Who Cried Pearls took animated short, and live-action short ended in a rare tie between The Singers and Two People Exchanging Saliva. That is where this year’s Oscar-night unpredictability actually lived.

The losers were less about humiliation than missed scale. Sinners lost the “historic sweep” narrative. Hamnet got its lead-actress win but did not turn that respect into a broader takeover. Frankenstein had a very respectable three-win craft night — production design, costume design, makeup and hairstyling — but stayed boxed into technical admiration rather than broader passion. And if you were rooting for one of the smaller critical favorites to punch above its weight in a major category, the Academy mostly chose consolidation over curveballs. Even the undercard surprises felt like deviations within a fairly orderly top-line story.

So the clean read on the 2026 Oscars is this: One Battle After Another won the night, Sinners won enough to stay culturally huge, and the telecast’s best drama came from history-making craft wins and undercard reversals, not from some giant Best Picture ambush. That made the ceremony a little less chaotic than some recent years, but probably stronger in hindsight. The Academy did not go wild; it went decisive.