2026 Oscar Predictions: BEST ACTRESS (August)

Best Actress is once again feeling a bit bleak for top tier contenders, with filling out a top 10 turning into a struggle.

That said, in looking at the cream of the crop, I could see the top five I have, the same top five I’ve had all season, remaining intact. Below Renate Reinsve (Sentimental Value), Jessie Buckley (Hamnet), Rose Byrne (If I Had Legs I’d Kick You), Julia Roberts (After the Hunt) and Cynthia Erivo (Wicked: For Good) it’s a wide open field. But those #4 and #5 spots are iffy; we’ve seen very recently the attempted return of former Best Actress winners fail spectacularly here so Roberts needs to have a full-proof performance. Erivo returning playing the same character just last year isn’t common, she’ll also need to knock it out of the park. Or Oz, as it were.

That leaves a myriad of potential contenders fighting to take their spots, namely Rebecca Ferguson in A House of Dynamite, the return of director Kathyrn Bigelow. Ferguson is also Netflix’s only Best Actress contender this season (if she’s even lead) and a season without a Netflix leading lady feels odd. Amanda Seyfried in The Testament of Ann Lee will likely pick up a distributor once it premieres at Venice but who will it be? Will A24, who picked up Mona Fastvold’s partner Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist last year step in? What if Emily Blunt goes lead for The Smashing Machine? Then things get complicated for the indie studio. Can Jennifer Lawrence survive the middling reviews of Die My Love, a film so unfinished when it debuted at Cannes that Lynne Ramsay’s been in the edit room ever since, giving it no more festival appearances until its November bow?

With so many TBDs just ahead of fall festival season there is room for a studio who’s an excellent and efficient campaigner to step and make something happen for a fledgling contender but tick tock…

Here are my 2026 Oscar nomination predictions in Best Actress for August.

Other contenders: Cate Blanchett – Father, Mother, Sister, Brother (MUBI), Dakota Johnson – Materialists (A24), Lucy Liu – Rosemead (TBD), Nadia Melliti – The Little Sister (TBD) – Cannes winner, Margot Robbie – A Big Bold Beautiful Journey (Sony Pictures/TriStar), Anya Taylor-Joy – Sacrifice (TBD) NEW

*Lead or supporting? Emily Blunt – The Smashing Machine (A24), Laura Dern – Is This Thing On? (Searchlight Pictures), Rebecca Ferguson – A House of Dynamite (Netflix), Emma Stone – Bugonia (Focus Features)

2025 or 2026? Amy Adams – At the Sea (TBD), Anne Hathaway – Mother Mary (A24), Helen Mirren – Switzerland (TBD), Jessica Lange – Long Day’s Journey Into Night (TBD), Jenna Ortega – Klara and the Sun (Sony Pictures), Zendaya – The Drama (A24)

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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.

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