2026 Oscar Predictions: BEST ACTOR (October)

All aboard! The October Best Actor race is chugging along and this month Joel Edgerton makes a major move in what feels like Netflix’s sleeper hit this season, Train Dreams.

After debuting at Sundance at the beginning of the year, Netflix picked up Train Dreams just days before the end of the festival for a reported deal in the “high-teen millions.” But the streamer, with a handful of high-profile titles coming to Venice and Telluride (as well as those bought out of Cannes), kept the profile of Train Dreams low, letting it emerge at Toronto in September to raves, followed by successful stints at Vancouver, Mill Valley, Middleburg, Hamptons, BFI London and more, closing out its festival run at AFI and Denver this week before its release in November. It also sits at an 85 on Metacritic and a 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, making it the best reviewed Netflix awards contender of the year.

In that time, Edgerton has earned festival awards from Mill Valley, Deauville and more for his performance in the quiet, story of a life film by Clint Bentley. While Edgerton has never been Oscar-nominated before, he’s been in the periphery. Whether it’s starring with Jacki Weaver in her Oscar-nominated turn in 2010’s Animal Kingdom or 2016’s Loving opposite Oscar nominee Ruth Negga or in the Oscar-winning Zero Dark Thirty, the Australian actor has amassed good will as well as good performances in his 30-year career and this just might be his time.

While we know that biopics of musicians tend to do well here, sometimes even when you have the box office and the reviews you can miss out (I’m looking at you, Taron Egerton, sadly) but if you’re missing both…that’s a pretty tough hill to climb. For Jeremy Allen White in Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, which just opened 2025 AFI FEST, the film is currently sitting at a 63 on Metacritic with a 63% on Rotten Tomatoes. That alone would be an obstacle but the film, which opens tomorrow from 20th Century Studios, which is tracking for a bleak $8-12M opening in the U.S. on a whopping 3400 screens. By comparison, Timothée Chalamet’s Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown came in with a modest 70 on Metacritic and an 82% on Rotten Tomatoes on its way to $140M worldwide, with $75M of that in the U.S. While White has good notices for the film, is it enough to bypass all of those metrics that have felled many before him?

Here are my 2026 Oscar nomination predictions in Best Actor for October.

Other contenders: Austin Butler – Caught Stealing (A24), Benicio Del Toro – The Phoenician Scheme (Focus Features), Ralph Fiennes – The Choral (Sony Pictures Classics), Rami Malek – Nuremberg (Sony Pictures Classics), Guillaume Marbeck – Nouvelle Vague (Netflix), Paul Mescal – The History of Sound (MUBI), Dylan O’Brien* – Twinless (Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions) – Sundance winner, Josh O’Connor – The Mastermind (MUBI), Brad Pitt – F1: The Movie (Apple Original Films/Warner Bros), Toni Servillo – La Grazia (MUBI) – Venice Best Actor, Channing Tatum – Roofman (Paramount Pictures), Tonatiuh – Kiss of the Spider Woman (Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions) ↓

*Lead or supporting?

• Author
• Recent Posts

Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

Latest posts by Erik Anderson (see all)

• Seattle Film Critics Society (SFCS) Nominations: ‘Sinners’ Leads with Record-Tying 14 - December 5, 2025
• AwardsWatch Podcast Ep. 318 – The First Week of Awards Season with Critics Choice, Spirit Awards Nominations; NYFF, NBR, Gotham Winners - December 5, 2025
• Critics Choice Awards TV Nominations: ‘Adolescence’ Leads, Followed by ‘Nobody Wants This’ - December 5, 2025