FINAL 2026 Oscar Predictions: BEST ACTRESS

Mother.

Truly the word, the subject, the theme of 2025 actress performances. Jessie Buckley, Rose Byrne, Jennifer Lawrence, Amanda Seyfried all took us to the mother church this season and any who weren’t already converted were immediately proselytized.

Yet with all of these deep dives into motherhood, and all of its joys and trappings alike, there isn’t room for them all in a final five that also includes ‘mothers’ of a different kind: Chase Infiniti (mother issues), Emma Stone (mother monster) and Kate Hudson (mother “Thunder”).

Buckley, who’s been the frontrunner to win since September, comes in with Critics Choice and Golden Globe wins, a SAG nom and BAFTA longlist (where she’ll easily get in). Byrne also won a Globe (in comedy) and has the same bonafides. As do Infiniti and Stone (Infiniti Stone, heh).

Renate Reinsve (Sentimental Value) might have missed SAG, but not a single non-English language performance or film made the cut, so not being a strange outlier puts her on an even playing field. Add to that her win this weekend at the European Film Awards (where SV swept), similar to Anatomy of a Fall and Sandra Hüller, and I don’t think she’s not missing here.

So that’s five, right? Seems easy. But not so fast. Ever since Song Sung Blue had its splashy world premiere at AFI Fest in November, the path for Kate Hudson to return to the Oscars after 25 years has seemingly been set out in front of her. When the film was honored at the Gotham Awards in December, co-star Hugh Jackman said he firmly believed she would win the Oscar for this performance. The crowd response to that declaration was tepid and even included a few laughs, but look at where we are now. While she missed Critics Choice, Hudson has Globe and SAG nods and, maybe more importantly, the BAFTA longlist mention. As we know, we won’t have BAFTA nominations until after Oscar noms but her reach is across oceans. She’s a real threat here, at least at the nomination stage. Several stars, like Demi Moore and Da’Vine Joy Randolph, and her own Oscar-winning mother Goldie Hawn, have come out in support, hosting screenings and moderating Q&As. But who would she really replace? Infiniti, a young newcomer in the widely predicted Best Picture winner or Stone, a two-time Best Actress winner in her Cate Blanchett era of risky projects and Academy respect?

Here are my final 2026 Oscar nomination predictions in Best Actress.

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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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