The Awards Alchemist’s Recap of the 2026 Oscars
The 98th Academy Awards have come and gone, and with them Paul Thomas Anderson is now a three-time Oscar winner. As someone who believes There Will Be Blood ranks among the three greatest films of the century, it was wonderful to see what felt like a long overdue coronation come to pass. I had a similar feeling when Christopher Nolan won for Oppenheimer just a couple years ago. Awards season can be long and exhausting, yet every year it still surprises me how quickly the Oscars come and go, and with them another year of my life has flown by.
For awards nerds, the year both begins and ends with the Oscars. So happy new year, I suppose.
For reasons both personal and professional, this past season was the most difficult one I’ve covered in the 17 years I’ve been doing this online. Like many of you, I’m glad it’s over. I’m ready to turn the page to the next race, which might already be starting this weekend with a little film called Project Hail Mary. Stay tuned for my first look at the 99th Academy Awards soon.
Before that, though, I want to reflect briefly on this year’s race.
One thing I’ve learned about the awards pundit world over the last two decades is that no one is going to toot your horn for you. However much time, effort, or money you pour into the process, the work is left largely to speak for itself. So every once in a while, you’re allowed to acknowledge it.
So indulge me for a moment as I reflect on how this season turned out.
As far back as I can remember I always wanted to be an Oscar Expert at Gold Derby (cue Tony Bennett’s “Rags to Riches”).
As simple or even silly as that might sound, it was a genuine bucket list moment when that finally happened in 2024. But for me it was never just about being part of the panel, though that alone meant a lot. The real goal was always to see how my work would stack up against the best in the field on Oscar night.
This season turned out to be one of the most challenging races I can remember. In many categories the industry seemed to settle around the same frontrunners, which meant most pundit boards looked remarkably similar. The difficulty wasn’t identifying the obvious contenders. It was figuring out where the race might break from consensus.
In the end, I finished the Oscars with 21 correct predictions, missing only Animated Short Film, Casting, and Cinematography. In all three cases my runner-up pick ultimately took the prize.
Five experts finished with 21 correct overall, including my friend Tomris Laffly and longtime industry voices Gregory Ellwood, Scott Feinberg, and Pete Hammond. Gold Derby’s scoring system awards more points for calling winners earlier in the season, and by that measure my predictions finished at the top of the standings.
It was a gratifying result, especially considering how unpredictable parts of the season felt.
That said, there is always room to grow. Awards predicting has a way of humbling you quickly. Hindsight can be brutal in this game, and even when the results go your way you can usually find a handful of races where you’d rethink the process.
The category that ultimately created the biggest separation for me this year was Documentary Feature.
In a season where many predictions lined up the same way across pundit boards, that race offered one of the few opportunities to take a calculated risk. Historically, you rarely distinguish yourself in these contests simply by following consensus. One or two carefully chosen deviations are usually necessary.
That thought led me back to my Awards Alchemist piece from March of 2025, my first look at the 98th Academy Awards. In that article I wrote about how the Academy’s increasingly international voting body has begun influencing certain categories more heavily.
Animated Feature and Documentary Feature stood out as the places where that shift seemed most likely to shape the outcome. Animated Feature had recent precedents with international winners like Flow and The Boy and the Heron. Documentary Feature, meanwhile, has increasingly favored films with global urgency and political weight.
With KPop Demon Hunters feeling like a near certainty in Animated, my focus stayed on Documentary. I had been considering Mr. Nobody Against Putin for some time and ultimately made the switch in my final predictions.
The Perfect Neighbor had the resume of a typical frontrunner, but some warning signs were hard to ignore. Its losses at PGA, ACE, and BAFTA suggested a level of vulnerability that the broader narrative around the race didn’t fully acknowledge.
There was also a broader context. The Perfect Neighbor told a very American story, while Mr. Nobody Against Putin aligned more closely with the Academy’s recent pattern of rewarding internationally focused documentaries with strong political themes.
And if I’m being completely honest, I also had a feeling that a title with “Putin” in it might prove difficult for a largely liberal voting body to resist.
In the end, that read on the race proved correct.
Moments like that are what make awards predicting fascinating. Statistics and historical trends matter, but so does recognizing when a particular race may be ready to break from them.
That same March 2025 article also included six of the ten films that ultimately went on to be nominated for Best Picture, which reinforced that the overall framework for the season was largely on track.
As for the ceremony itself, here are a few quick thoughts on what worked and what didn’t.
The Good
- Madigan winning 40 years after her first nomination (Twice in a Lifetime)
- Jordan becoming the seventh black actor to win an Oscar
- Casting going to OBAA. The first Oscar handed out in this category went to a film with a massive and carefully assembled ensemble. Even though I missed that prediction, it made sense and, ultimately, is a decision I can agree with
- Autumn Durald Arkapaw’s historic Cinematography win, becoming the first woman to take the prize. It was just difficult to imagine Adolpho Veloso finishing the season with so little recognition for his stunning work on Train Dreams
- A tie in Live Action Short Film snapped an 0-5 run for me with the short films. Yes, it took a freakin’ tie for me to finally call one correct.
The Great
- Conan’s opening Weapons segment
- Miles Caton, Raphael Saadiq, and company performing the Original Song nominee “I Lied to You”
- The five presenters for the first ever Best Casting Oscar
- Matt Berry’s incredible voice (I miss you, Jackie Daytona)
- Jessie Buckley winning her first Oscar, which may not be her last
- PTA finally winning his first Oscar, alongside Ryan Coogler as both took their respective Screenplay prizes. Both speeches were terrific
- Being right about Putin, of course
- F1 is now an Oscar-winning film
The Mixed
- The Bridesmaids skit wasn’t funny and felt like a wasted opportunity with the talent on stage
- I know I’ll take some heat for this because the In Memoriam segment was widely praised. The tributes to Rob Reiner (his casts!), Catherine O’Hara, Diane Keaton, and Robert Redford were heartfelt and well deserved. Streisand breaking into Original Song Oscar winner “The Way We Were” made me tear up, despite the audio issues with her speech. Still, it felt strange that Robert Duvall did not receive a similar moment. As someone who ranks him among the greatest actors of all time, that omission was disappointing, to say the least.
The Bad
- Sean Penn not showing up to receive his historic third Oscar
- Whatever Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans were doing
- Relegating the remaining three Original Song nominees to a QR code vs. allowing them to perform live
- The amount of speeches cut short. I can’t wait for the Oscars to go to Youtube in 2029 for this reason alone.
I hope you all enjoyed the 98th Academy Awards and found a few wins to celebrate along the way. I know it’s never easy watching a favorite lose on Oscar night, but as any lifelong Cleveland sports fan knows, there’s always next year.
Which starts… NOW!
- The Awards Alchemist’s Recap of the 2026 Oscars - March 16, 2026
- 2026 Oscar Predictions: The Awards Alchemist Predicts the Winners – Part Two - March 12, 2026
- 2026 Oscar Predictions: The Awards Alchemist Predicts the Winners – Part One - March 9, 2026
The Awards Alchemist’s Recap of the 2026 Oscars 
AwardsWatch Podcast Ep. 337 – Reactions to the 98th Academy Awards Winners 
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98th Oscars: ‘One Battle After Another’ Wins Best Picture, Best Director for Paul Thomas Anderson