2026 Oscar Predictions: The Awards Alchemist Predicts the Winners – Part One
And so we limp to the finish line of another awards season.
Every year I tell myself it won’t feel quite this long. Every year it does. The takes get louder. The battle lines get sillier. The certainty gets more certain. And if this sounds familiar, it’s because I probably said this last year, and the year before that, and the year before that… And I’m sure that next year we’ll be insisting the 99th Academy Awards race is the most chaotic in history.
Awards season isn’t a sprint. It’s not even a marathon. It’s a tragic relay that never truly stops. The next race begins the moment the last envelope is opened. Festivals blur into critics prizes. Critics prizes blur into guilds. Guilds blur into televised ceremonies. Somewhere in there, films are released, campaigns are mounted, narratives are born, and the internet decides it’s a war.
It’s exhausting. Not just because it’s long, but because the noise is relentless. A performance is either a masterpiece or an embarrassment. A film is either a cultural landmark or proof that cinema is dead. Nuance packs its bags around Thanksgiving and doesn’t return until spring.
And yet, here we are. Still watching. Still arguing. Still refreshing guild tallies at ungodly hours. We do it because beneath the hot takes and manufactured outrage, this is about something that matters to us.
The Oscars are imperfect, occasionally too political, and often maddening. But they remain a rare global moment where filmmaking is centered and celebrated. Craftspeople who work in the shadows have their names read on the industry’s biggest stage. Stories that moved or challenged us get one final spotlight before we close the book on the year.
There’s something meaningful about that pause. One last look before the cycle begins again.
So yes, the season is silly. Yes, it’s overlong. Yes, we all need a nap. But we keep playing because we love it. Because movies matter. And because, for one night, the chaos gives way to celebration.
For the first time in my 17 years of predicting the Oscars online, I’m breaking my final predictions into two parts. Partly because these manifestos have a habit of spiraling into novella territory. And partly because so many races are effectively over before the orchestra even warms up.
So we’ll dispense with the foregone conclusions first. Then, as March 15 approaches, the Ides of March, a date history associates with betrayal, backstabbing, and sudden reversals of fortune, we’ll turn to the categories that could still draw blood. If there is ever a night for an unexpected twist, it is one steeped in that kind of lore.
One last lap. Then we can all rest. For at least a moment.
As I usually do, I’m structuring these predictions in order from the easiest races to call to the categories most likely to make fools of us all. Each section will include three components: who I believe will win, who could pull off the upset, and who I feel should be winning. I will also include how I did in predicting the nominations in the category, as well as a key stat, trend, or piece of awards alchemy that explains why the prediction landed where it did. Patterns matter in this race. So do narratives. So does momentum and timing, lest we forget. Ignoring any of it is how you end up blindsided on the Ides of March.
With that, let’s get into it.
Lead Actress
Will win: Jessie Buckley (Hamnet)
Could win: Rose Byrne (If I Had Legs I’d Kick You)
Should win: Jessie Buckley (Hamnet)
Nomination predictions score: 4/5 (missed Kate Hudson, had Chase Infiniti)
Lead Actress may be the surest thing on the board. Buckley delivered the performance of the year, and her Oscar has felt inevitable since Telluride. With the SAG victory, she completed the SAG/BAFTA/Globes/CCA sweep. Not since Adrien Brody in 2002 has an acting winner lost all four of those awards on the road to winning the Oscar. It would be historic if she didn’t win.
Emma Stone, nominated for her performance in Bugonia, becomes the youngest woman in Academy history to reach seven career Oscar nominations at age 37. The previous mark belonged to Meryl Streep, who reached seven at 38.
Before anyone frames this as Stone eclipsing Streep, context matters. All six of Streep’s nominations by age 37 were for acting. Two of Stone’s seven are for producing. That distinction doesn’t diminish the milestone, but it does clarify it. Seven nominations by 37 is rare air, however you slice it.
Adapted Screenplay
Will win: Paul Thomas Anderson (One Battle After Another)
Could win: Chloe Zhao and Maggie O’Farrell (Hamnet)
Should win: Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar (Train Dreams)
Nomination predictions score: 5/5
Has any precursor felt more irrelevant in recent years than the WGA? Between rigid eligibility rules, nominations often arriving after the Oscar nods, and winners announced once ballots are already cast, it’s hard to treat this as a meaningful bellwether. In 2023, they didn’t even announce their winners until after the Oscars.
Paul Thomas Anderson has already swept BAFTA, Globes, CCA, and the Scripter. Don’t second-guess it.
Original Screenplay
Will win: Ryan Coogler (Sinners)
Could win: Jafar Panahi (It Was Just an Accident)
Should win: Ryan Coogler (Sinners)
Nomination predictions score: 4/5 (missed Blue Moon, had Sorry, Baby)
I could make a case for the Academy to award Panahi, but the reality is this category feels just as locked as Adapted Screenplay. Coogler took BAFTA and Critics’ Choice but lost the Globe to PTA, who he won’t have to go up against in this category.
Over the past 20 years, the Best Picture winner also took Screenplay 16 times. Of the four exceptions, none occurred in split years where Picture and Director went to different films. If Director goes to Paul Thomas Anderson while Picture goes to Sinners, the Academy would likely award Sinners Original Screenplay, keeping the category aligned with Picture as it usually does. Even if Sinners doesn’t take Picture, its win here still feels all but certain.
Original Score
Will win: Ludwig Göransson (Sinners)
Could win: Jonny Greenwood (One Battle After Another)
Should win: Ludwig Göransson (Sinners)
Nomination predictions score: 4/5 (missed Bugonia, had Marty Supreme)
For the first time in Oscar history, all five nominees for Best Original Score are also up for Best Picture. No matter who prevails, it continues a dominant trend: 23 of the past 26 Original Score winners have come from films nominated for Picture. The only recent exceptions are Frida (2002), The Hateful Eight (2015), and Soul (2020).
Animated Feature
Will win: KPop Demon Hunters
Could win: Zootopia 2
Should win: Arco
Nomination predictions score: 5/5
KPop took home top honors at Annies, Globes, CCA, ACE, PGA, CAS, and VES. The only major award it didn’t contend for? The BAFTAs, where it was ineligible due to not meeting the UK’s mandatory theatrical release rules. A win at the Oscars would make KPop the first film in this category to claim the prize without receiving a BAFTA nomination first.
Visual Effects
Will win: Avatar: Fire and Ash
Could win: Sinners
Should win: Avatar: Fire and Ash
Nomination predictions score: 4/5 (missed Jurassic World Rebirth, had Superman)
Avatar: Fire and Ash enters Oscar night in a commanding position. Joe Letteri earns his 12th Visual Effects nomination, just one shy of Dennis Muren and Dan Sudick for the all-time record, and a win would mark his sixth Oscar, adding to his victories for The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), The Return of the King (2003), King Kong (2005), Avatar (2009), and Avatar: The Way of Water (2022).
Avatar: Fire and Ash has swept the major guild awards (VES, BAFTA, and CCA), which historically align strongly with Oscar outcomes.
If you are looking for an upset in this category, you might consider these branch overlap statistics: 13 of the last 17 Visual Effects winners were also nominated for Sound, and 21 of the last 25 were nominated for Production Design. Sinners is the only nominee this year meeting both criteria.
All told, the trends, precursors, and historical precedent heavily favor Avatar: Fire and Ash, though Sinners remains the only challenger with any plausible edge on a night that might be full of surprises.
Costume Design
Will win: Kate Hawley (Frankenstein)
Could win: Ruth E. Carter (Sinners)
Should win: Kate Hawley (Frankenstein)
Nomination predictions score: 3/5 (missed Avatar: Fire and Ash and Marty Supreme, had Wicked: For Good and Hedda)
Production Design
Will win: Tamara Deverell (Frankenstein)
Could win: Fiona Crombie and Alice Felton (Hamnet)
Should win: Tamara Deverell (Frankenstein)
Nomination predictions score: 3/5 (missed One Battle After Another and Marty Supreme, had Wicked: For Good and Avatar: Fire and Ash)
Makeup and Hairstyling
Will win: Mike Hill, Jordan Samuel, and Cliona Furey (Frankenstein)
Could win: Sian Richards, Ken Diaz, Mike Fontaine, and Shunika Terry (Sinners)
Should win: Mike Hill, Jordan Samuel, and Cliona Furey (Frankenstein)
Nomination predictions score: 3/5 (missed Kokuho and The Ugly Stepsister, had Wicked: For Good and One Battle After Another)
Frankenstein is poised to achieve something exceedingly rare. Since Makeup became a competitive category in 1981, only four films have won the trifecta of Art Direction/Production Design, Costume Design, and Makeup: Amadeus (1984), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), and Poor Things (2023). Fanny and Alexander (1983) won Art Direction and Costume Design, but Makeup wasn’t awarded that year.
This season, Frankenstein has dominated all the major guilds and precursor awards for Costumes, Production Design, and Makeup: CDG, ADG, SDSA, MUAH, BAFTA, and CCA. If it converts at the Oscars, it will become only the fifth film to claim all three in the same year.
Original Song
Will win: “Golden” (KPop Demon Hunters)
Could win: “I Lied to You” (Sinners)
Should win: “I Lied to You” (Sinners)
Nomination predictions score: 4/5 (missed “Sweet Dreams of Joy” – Viva Verdi!, had “The Girl in the Bubble” – Wicked: For Good)
Hard to bet against the song which took home the guild prize from SCL, the Globe, the CCA, and the Grammy for Best Song Written for Visual Media. While I could see “I Lied to You” winning if the night goes very much in Sinners way, I think this is another category not to overthink.
If “Golden” wins, it will be the 12th time the Oscar went to an animated film in this category since 1989, and the first since “Remember Me” (Coco) in 2017.
Sound
Will win: F1
Could win: Sinners
Should win: F1
Nomination predictions score: 5/5
F1, Sinners, and Frankenstein are the only films to land nominations from the three major sound guilds (CAS, MPSE, and AMPS), while also receiving recognition from BAFTA and CCA. One Battle After Another missed only with AMPS. Sirat missed all five.
F1 performed extremely well across the precursors, winning BAFTA, CAS, AMPS, and CCA. The only notable loss came at the MPSE Golden Reel Awards, where Sinners won Feature/Dialogue ADR and Frankenstein took Feature Effects/Foley.
Historically, the MPSE Dialogue ADR category has not been a strong predictor of the Oscar winner, matching just three times in the last 17 years. The Effects/Foley prize has been more reliable, aligning with the Oscar 11 times over that same span. Even that track record pales in comparison to BAFTA, which has matched the Academy’s Sound winner 15 times in the past 17 years, including four of the five years since the Academy consolidated the category into a single Sound award. That consistency keeps F1 as the safest bet here.
The one result that gives me pause is F1’s loss at the ACE Eddie Awards. Historically, Editing and Sound winners often move together. Nine of the last twelve Oscar winners for Sound also won Editing, but the three exceptions all occurred in the last three years. That suggests the connection between Sound and Editing may be weakening and could continue to diverge this year.
The ACE winners were Sinners and One Battle After Another, both leading contenders for Best Picture. In a race this tight, it can be tempting to default to the Picture frontrunner. But the last Best Picture winner to also win Sound was The Hurt Locker in 2009. So it’s obvious that Sound is not a category that works linearly with Picture.
Director
Will win: Paul Thomas Anderson (One Battle After Another)
Could win: Ryan Coogler (Sinners)
Should win: Chloé Zhao (Hamnet)
Nomination predictions score: 4/5 (Missed Josh Safdie, had Guillermo del Toro)
This entire season feels predicated on one fact: PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON MUST WIN NOW! Or at least the internet says so.
With three nominations this year for Picture, Director, and Adapted Screenplay, Anderson now sits at 14 career Oscar nominations without a win. That narrative has hovered over the race from the start.
The strongest structural argument for PTA comes from the DGA. Since 1948, the Directors Guild winner has taken the Oscar 69 of 77 times, an 89.6 percent hit rate. Winning the DGA has also historically set up Best Picture success: the DGA winner’s film has gone on to win Picture 59 times in that same span, roughly 76 percent of the time. Anderson swept the four major televised and industry precursors, Critics Choice, BAFTA, the Golden Globes, and the DGA, cementing his frontrunner status.
One more wrinkle makes this lineup particularly noteworthy. All five Director nominees were also nominated for writing their films. In 98 years of Oscar history, that has happened only three times, and remarkably, all three instances have occurred within the past four years. The Academy has increasingly favored auteurs who are the singular creative engines behind their films. That’s an interesting trend that ties to the ever-changing Academy dynamics.
Let’s talk about Ryan Coogler and the mountain he’d have to climb to win Best Director.
The last filmmaker to win Best Director without taking at least one of the DGA, CCA, BAFTA, or Globe was Ang Lee in 2012 for Life of Pi. That same season, Ben Affleck famously swept those prizes for Argo, but wasn’t even nominated for the Oscar.
Since the DGA began handing out awards in 1948, only four Oscar-winning directors have failed to win at least one of those major precursors: Joseph L. Mankiewicz for A Letter to Three Wives (before BAFTA and CCA existed); Carol Reed for Oliver! (before CCA); Sydney Pollack for Out of Africa (a year BAFTA did not award Direction); and the Affleck anomaly, where the precursor sweep came without an Oscar nomination.
So if Coogler prevails over PTA, it would be historic for a couple reasons. He would become the first director to win the Oscar while being nominated at DGA, CCA, BAFTA, and Globes and losing all four. He would also become the first Black man to win Best Director. That’s not just an upset. That’s a stat-shattering, historic moment.
Here’s the real question: when Michael B. Jordan triumphed at SAG and the cast of Sinners took Ensemble, was that a genuine shift in momentum this late in the game? Or just a final flare of false hope before voting closed? After months listening to absolutists proclaiming narratives of inevitability, did we watch as the tide turned at the precise moment ballots were in voters’ hands? And if so, which other races might feel the aftershock?
That’s the paradox of a long season. Fatigue sets in. Certainty calcifies. And then, suddenly, something cracks. The longer the runway, the more room there is for reconsideration. For second thoughts. For passion to override historic trends and statistical analysis. It gives Mr. Right a fighting chance against Mr. Right Now.
For much of this stretch, the length of the season has felt draining. But maybe that’s the point. The extended timeline forces the industry to keep watching, keep debating, keep reassessing. If that SAG eruption was any indication, we may be headed toward a genuinely unpredictable Oscar night.
Maybe the long awards season isn’t such a bad thing after all.
- 2026 Oscar Predictions: The Awards Alchemist Predicts the Winners – Part One - March 9, 2026
- 2026 Oscar Predictions: The Awards Alchemist Predicts the Nominees in All 24 Categories - January 20, 2026
- Top Ten Breakthrough Performers of 2025: Miles Caton, Eva Victor, Chase Infiniti and More - January 7, 2026
2026 Oscar Predictions: The Awards Alchemist Predicts the Winners – Part One 
FINAL 2026 Oscar Predictions: CINEMATOGRAPHY 
FINAL 2026 Oscar Predictions: BEST SOUND 
American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) Awards: ‘One Battle After Another,’ ‘The Studio’ and ‘Black Rabbit’