2026 Oscar Predictions: BEST ACTOR (September)

A new month, a new #1. Leonardo DiCaprio moves to the top spot for Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another with a stellar performance in a film that’s already logged the best review of the year so far, hitting 97 on Metacritic and 98% on Rotten Tomatoes as this writing when the reviews went live.

Timothée Chalamet (Marty Supreme) and Jeremy Allen White (Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere) hold on as top contenders alongside George Clooney in the self-deprecating Jay Kelly and then it gets really murky. With a much deeper bench than Best Actress, Cannes Best Actor winner Wagner Moura in The Secret Agent, Dwayne Johnson in The Smashing Machine, Michael B. Jordan in Sinners and more are going to battle it out.

Sony Pictures Classics revealed that it would push both Russell Crowe and Rami Malek, already Best Actor winners, in lead for Nuremberg. Crowe has the reviews over Malek here and could make a play. The pre-festival buzz on Brendan Fraser and Rental Family dissipated pretty quickly once the film was seen but he can’t be counted out completely. Although, if Searchlight feels like they need to pivot, they have Will Arnett in Is This Thing On? closing the New York Festival next month. Lee Byung-hun makes a jump into the top 10 with TIFF International People’s Choice winner No Other Choice and while the final placement for Paul Mescal in Hamnet is still up in the air and a lead push remains to be or not to be, my sources say he’ll stay in supporting.

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

Other contenders: Austin Butler – Caught Stealing (A24), Willem Dafoe – Late Flame (TBD), Benicio Del Toro – The Phoenician Scheme (Focus Features), Colin Farrell – A Big Bold Beautiful Journey (Sony Pictures/TriStar), Ralph Fiennes – The Choral (Sony Pictures Classics), Hugh Jackman – Song Song Blue (Focus Features), 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)

*Lead or supporting? Tom Hiddleston – The Life of Chuck (NEON), Paul Mescal – Hamnet (Focus Features), Dylan O’Brien – Twinless (Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions) – Sundance Performance winner

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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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