FINAL 2026 Oscar Predictions: BEST PICTURE and BEST DIRECTOR

What started a full year ago, at Sundance, winding through Berlin, Cannes, Venice, Telluride, Toronto, New York and Los Angeles, brings us to today.

After the wealth of precursors and guidelines we have for Best Picture and Best Director, a few things are probably clear. Getting 8/10 or 9/10 right in Best Picture should be a given. One Battle After Another, Sinners, Hamnet, Sentimental Value, Marty Supreme, Frankenstein, Bugonia are locks. There’s wiggle room to explore the next three spots, which are a combination of Train Dreams, The Secret Agent, F1, Blue Moon, It Was Just an Accident and Weapons. Taking into account SAG and PGA nominations and the BAFTA longlists, it’s a top 10 that will likely be shaped, as most year’s are, by the actors branch. It’s usually safe to say that eight or nine out of the ten Best Picture nominees will also have an acting nomination among their haul. That’s good news for Blue Moon, The Secret Agent and Weapons. Train Dreams if you think Joel Edgerton is getting in, entirely possible. Not great for F1, which has had zero actor support up to this point, which is why I think the Ford v Ferrari comp is a distraction. Christian Bale got SAG and Golden Globe nominations for it, the actors were there. It’s going to be impressive enough for two horror films to get in (Sinners and Frankenstein) but three? For a group that has historically been so resistant?

But recent weeks have seen two things happen; the rise of The Secret Agent at exactly the right time, and the fall of It Was Just an Accident at exactly the wrong time. While it’s not hard to see how and why The Secret Agent has been climbing, the downturn of the Jafar Panahi, who should arguably have the single best narrative of any person this season, has been a bit shocking. A Palme d’Or winner from NEON struggling for a Best Picture nomination? This isn’t Titane; this is an urgent, brilliant, funny and topical film that also highlights the directors own struggles to create. A man that turned himself into an Iranian court for sentencing. So what happened? I have one theory; when It Was Just an Accident or Panahi have won awards or been a runner-up it’s been with small, juried organizations. Cannes, Gotham, even the highbrow critics groups. On a larger stage, it loses everything at Critics Choice and the Golden Globes, the two places The Secret Agent thrived. Maybe IWJAA sneaks in after all where it was previously a safe call but it’ll probably be a squeaker.

Director is sort of similar, just on a half scale, which makes it much harder. The one and only true lock is Paul Thomas Anderson. With Critics Choice and Golden Globe wins, a DGA nom and the BAFTA longlist mention, he is the anointed one this season. Ryan Coogler and Chloé Zhao should be next up but in a year with so much possibility, either missing would be both a shock (especially as the only Black and female contenders) but also weirdly very Academy to do. Zhao is a previous winner, of course, as is Guillermo del Toro. But that isn’t the security you’d think. Neither are a Spielberg or Scorsese. Last year saw all first time nominees in this category. This branch can turn things upside down. Marty Supreme is a film that’s both a big hit and rising at exactly the right time so Josh Safdie is right there in the mix. But the DGA and Academy have not gone 5/5 here since 2009, the first year of the Best Picture expansion. Someone, or more than one person, always misses. So who is it among the DGA five? I’m taking what feels like a risk and saying it’s del Toro. It could be Zhao. It could be Safdie. It could even be Coogler (I’m not invoking the Barbie comp here) but at least one of them will be out for Joachim Trier or more. But, what the Academy does in this category will reverberate, either positively or negatively, for some years to come.

Ok, enough chatter. Let’s get to it. Here are my final 2026 Oscar predictions in Best Picture and Best Director.

BEST PICTURE

BEST DIRECTOR

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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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