2026 Oscar Predictions: BEST ACTRESS (December)

The first week of December brought us a deluge of industry and critics winners and nominations, including the AFI Top 10 list, National Board of Review, Critics Choice, Golden Globes, Los Angeles and New York film critics, the Gotham winners, Spirit Awards nominations and more.

Rose Byrne (If I Had Legs I’d Kick You) is on a hot streak with wins from New York, Los Angeles, quite a hat trick and one that could close with the National Society of Film Critics next month to dominate that trifecta. She also earned an NBR win, putting her in a seemingly idea position for a nomination despite that fact that while on the surface that streak looks great but it also painted with the same brush that saw Sally Hawkins (Happy-Go-Lucky) and Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Hard Truths) miss the final cut. Interestingly enough, both of those losses came from Mike Leigh films but necessary to point out nonetheless.

Jessie Buckley had nabbed a trio of regional critics wins (Atlanta, DC and Michigan) but the overall pulse check of Hamnet was lower than expected with the top tier critics groups. Still, the film has scored great with Critics Choice and Golden Globe nominations (11 and 6, respectively) so she’s still more than safe to stay in the top spot for another month.

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

Other contenders: Sally Hawkins – Bring Her Back (A24), Lucy Liu – Rosemead (Vertical), Nadia Melliti – The Little Sister (TBD), Helen Mirren – Goodbye June (Netflix)

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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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