British Film Academy Sets Dates for 2026 BAFTA Awards

BAFTA today confirmed that the 2026 EE BAFTA Film Awards will be held on Sunday, February 22, 2026.

The announcement marks the first of the major awards groups to stake a claim on a February date and on arguably the most competitive weekend. Last year, the 2025 BAFTAs were the weekend prior, on the 16th, and in a Leap Year month for February. The weekend of the 22nd/23rd last year held no less than eight awards ceremonies, including the Film Independent Spirit Awards and the Screen Actors Guild Awards. With the 2026 Oscars being held on March 15 (nearly two weeks later than last season), it opens up the timeline a bit for some of those awards bodies to fill in the weekend of February 28th and March 1st.

Last year, Conclave and The Brutalist were the top winners, with the former taking Best Film and Best Adapted Screenplay and the latter earning four awards, including Best Director for Brady Corbet and Best Actor for Adrien Brody. While Conclave’s screenplay win and Brody would go on to repeat at the Oscars, it was Anora that dominated, winning Best Picture, Best Director/Original Screenplay/Editing for Sean Baker and Best Actress for Mikey Madison, who also picked up a BAFTA win. Supporting winners Kieran Culkin (A Real Pain) and Zoe Saldaña (Emilia Pérez) also went on to win Oscars as a part of their full season sweep.

First held in 1949, the BAFTA Film Awards have grown to become one of the biggest events in the global film calendar. The 2025 EE BAFTA Film Awards were watched by 3.4 million people on BBC One (3.4m peak/3m average) and on the night, there were also 16.7m video views of ceremony highlights on BAFTA’s social media platforms.

Voting takes place over three rounds: Longlisting, Nominations and Winners, by the academy’s global voting film membership – comprising over 8,100 industry creatives. The organization’s latest membership survey data can be found here.

BAFTA’s eligibility criteria, voting and campaigning rules are annually assessed and the full timeline and eligibility details for the 2026 EE BAFTA Film Awards will be announced at a later date.

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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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