Oscars 2026 updates: One Battle After Another wins Best Picture

Thank you for joining us for the live coverage of the 98th annual Academy Awards.

For takeaways from tonight’s ceremony, check out our analysis here.

To learn more about one of the nominees at tonight’s ceremony, The Voice of Hind Rajab, read our coverage here.

And find out what has happened after last year’s Best Documentary Feature winner, No Other Land, with this portrait of one of its directors.

• After many nominations and few wins, it was writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson’s night, as his political thriller One Battle After Another swept six award categories, including Best Picture and Best Director.
• But Ryan Coogler’s vampire blockbuster Sinners was close behind, earning the second biggest Oscar haul of the night, with four awards.
• Sinners actor Michael B Jordan scored one of the biggest triumphs of all, emerging victorious in a tight race against Timothee Chalamet for the Best Actor Oscar.
• True to the odds, Jessie Buckley of the Shakespearean drama Hamnet scored her much-anticipated first win in the Best Actress category.
• Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, meanwhile, reigned supreme in three of the technical categories, including Best Costume, Best Production Design and Best Hairstyling and Makeup.
• KPop Demon Hunters won both the categories it was nominated in: Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song.
• But leaving empty-handed are Marty Supreme, The Secret Agent and Bugonia, despite each having multiple nominations.
• The night included notable political overtones, including antiwar comments and jokes about free speech, but US President Donald Trump was only gestured at, never named.

Every win at the Academy Awards is memorable, but some serve as historic milestones for representation in film and culture.

This year, Autumn Durald Arkapaw became the first woman of colour to win the Best Cinematography award for her work on the vampire film Sinners.

A rare tie also occurred in the best live-action short film section, with The Singers and Two People Exchanging Saliva sharing the award.

This has only happened on six other occasions in the academy’s history. The last time it happened was in 2012, when Skyfall and Zero Dark Thirty both won for best sound editing.

One Battle After Another: Six wins

• Best Picture
• Best Director
• Best Supporting Actor
• Best Casting
• Best Film Editing
• Best Adapted Screenplay

Sinners: Four wins

• Best Actor
• Best Original Screenplay
• Best Cinematography
• Best Original Score

Frankenstein: Three wins

• Best Hair and Makeup
• Best Production Design
• Best Costume Design

KPop Demon Hunters: Two wins

• Best Original Song
• Best Animated Feature

Several films also scooped up notable Oscars, including Weapons (Best Supporting Actress), Hamnet (Best Actress), Sentimental Value (Best International Feature) and Mr Nobody Against Putin (Best Documentary Feature).

This year’s Oscars ceremony largely came down to a three-way race between One Battle After Another, Sinners and a dark horse, Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein.

But some films left nearly empty-handed, and the list of snubs is long.

The ping-pong drama Marty Supreme, for instance, was expected to be a leading contender in several categories, among them Best Actor for 30-year-old Timothee Chalamet’s ruthless portrayal.

But Marty Supreme earned zero Oscars tonight, despite having ample odds with nine nominations.

Likewise, the much-lauded Brazilian film The Secret Agent struck out in all four of its categories, despite a recent Golden Globe win for star Wagner Moura.

The Shakespearean drama Hamnet did only slightly better, winning a single Oscar in the Best Actress category, despite its eight nominations total.

A video played out the final moments of the 98th Oscar ceremony, with host Conan O’Brien inserting himself into one last film: Best Picture winner One Battle After Another.

This time, he took on the role of the villainous Colonel Lockjaw, who ends the film winning membership into an exclusive – and explicitly racist – club.

As Lockjaw is happily shown to his new office, the door behind him locks, and a mysterious gas pours through the vent, killing him on the spot.

In O’Brien’s version of the scene, he has just been named “host for life” at the Oscars, an honour he discovers to be a poisoned pill as well. A cheeky bit of gallows humour from the now two-time host.

Taking the stage again after his Best Director win, Paul Thomas Anderson accepted the much-coveted Oscar for Best Picture.

But he used his time in the spotlight to acknowledge a goof in his previous speech.

“  I really blew it when I won a Best Director award, and I forgot to thank my cast,” Anderson said, surrounded by stars like Teyana Taylor, Chase Infiniti and Leonardo DiCaprio.

He also took a moment to express admiration for the other films nominated for Best Picture.

“ I just want to say that, in 1975, the Oscar nominees for Best Picture were Dog Day Afternoon, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Jaws, Nashville and Barry Lyndon,” Anderson said, ticking off films all considered to be classics.

“There is no best among them. There is just what the mood might be that day.”

Paul Thomas Anderson’s fast-paced, thrilling film One Battle After Another has been crowned Best Picture of 2026.

With emotionally compelling themes of family and identity and resistance to authoritarianism, standout performances from a stacked cast, and some of the most memorable scenes of the year, it quickly emerged as a frontrunner for best film.

“I’d like to dedicate this to the beautiful chaos of a mother’s heart.”

Accepting the Best Actress Oscar, Irish performer Jessie Buckley marks Mother’s Day in the United Kingdom with reflections from her life as a new mother to an eight-month-old.

“ We all come from a lineage of women who continue to create against all odds,” she said from the Oscar stage, thanking her director, Chloe Zhao, and writer Maggie O’Farrell for their work on Hamnet.

Hamnet walks away from tonight with a single Oscar so far, with only one category remaining.

Buckley added a cheeky message to her partner from the stage: “You’re my best friend, and I want to have 20,000 more babies with you.”

She began her career as a reality TV show contestant, competing for a chance to star in a West End musical. Now, Irish performer Jessie Buckley is taking home a much bigger prize: her first Oscar.

Her Academy Award for Best Actress comes in honour of her performance as Agnes, the wife of English playwright William Shakespeare, in the film Hamnet.

From her first moments on screen, dirt-streaked and roguish, Buckley sets the tone for the rest of the film. No prim period drama here. Her performance is a gritty, down-to-earth exploration of love and one of the harshest forms of loss, the death of a child.

Tonight’s win follows her victory at the Actor Awards, the BAFTAs, the Critics’ Choice Awards and the Golden Globes for Hamnet. This was her second Oscar nomination, following 2022’s drama The Lost Daughter.

The race for the Best Actor trophy has largely come down to Timothee Chalamet and Michael B Jordan — but it’s Jordan who has just claimed the prize.

The 39-year-old takes the stage to accept the Oscar for his starring role in Sinners, a vampire film infused with social commentary.

Only Jordan didn’t just play one role for the film. He played two: a pair of twins with starkly different personalities.

One of the brothers, Smoke, is responsible and sedate. The other, Stack, is passionate and impulsive. To keep the two characters’ personalities separate, Jordan deployed an array of tactics, even wearing overly small shoes to capture Stack’s discomfort with standing still.

It’s an ambitious double-sized performance for Jordan, who was nominated at the Oscars for the first time this year. Jordan also received this year’s Actor Award for his performance.

“ I stand here because of the people that came before me: Sidney Poitier, Denzel Washington, Hallie Berrie, Jamie Foxx, Forest Whitaker, Will Smith,” Jordan said.

Had Paul Thomas Anderson been yearning for that Best Director statuette? Apparently so.

“ You make a guy work hard for one of these,” he said, as his fourth nomination in the category became his first win.

While he honoured his fellow nominees, he reflected on what finally receiving the win meant to him.

“There will always be some doubt in your heart that you deserve it, but there is no question at [the] pleasure [of] having it for myself,” he said.

“ This is a wonderful gift, and I’m so happy to call the movies home.”

The fourth time’s the charm for Paul Thomas Anderson. He has been nominated for the Oscar for Best Director three times. And only now, in his fourth outing, does he finally get to take home the trophy.

Anderson is tonight being honoured for his work on the epic thriller One Battle After Another, which he also produced and wrote.

The film follows a former revolutionary who goes into hiding with his young daughter, until an obsessive colonel tracks them down for a deadly confrontation.

The film is one pulse-pounding chase after another, but it comes studded with political themes tailored to the present moment: It probes questions of race, immigration and the circular nature of history.

Anderson was previously nominated for Best Director for his work on There Will Be Blood, Phantom Thread and Licorice Pizza.

No surprise here: The animated film KPop Demon Hunters makes good on its promise and takes home the prize for Best Original Song.

It’s a historic win for the Oscars, which has never before honoured a K-pop song with one of its golden statuettes. But the film’s hit song Golden has been on a winning streak all year, having won a Golden Globe in this category and a Grammy.

Singer-songwriter EJAE has spoken about how the song was inspired by a gold tooth filling she received during the production of the film, as well as by her experiences struggling in the K-pop industry.

But now, Golden has turned her into a bona fide chart-topper, as she provides the lead vocals for the song’s gruelling three-octave range.

The music and lyrics are by EJAE, Mark Sonnenblick, Joong Gyu Kwak, Yu Han Lee, Hee Dong Nam, Jeong Hoon Seon and Teddy Park.

“ I’m just a film nerd from Norway.”

Norway’s Joachim Trier acknowledged the group effort that went into his film Sentimental Value, this year’s Best International Film.

“I  think I’ve made films to feel at home with people, and I’ve really felt at home with the crew. There’s 1,072 people on these credits, and I love them all,” he said.

He then offered an election-season message to the adults in the room: to protect the children around them.

“ I want to end by quoting or paraphrasing, rather, the wonderful American writer James Baldwin, who makes us remember that all adults are responsible for all children,” Trier said. “Let’s not vote for politicians who don’t take this seriously into account.”

Norway has just won the Oscar for Best International Feature for the drama Sentimental Value, starring Stellan Skarsgard and Renate Reinsve.

The film, directed by Joachim Trier, paints a portrait of a dysfunctional family of artists in modern-day Oslo. Their disparate paths converge, however, on the family home.

Within its walls, the father, a dissolute director played by Skarsgard, hopes to film a new movie starring his daughter. But the daughter refuses to be a part of the production as old wounds fester.

It’s a film that raises questions about the value of what we hold onto and what we let go of. In addition to its Best International Feature statuette, the film has received four acting nominations at tonight’s Oscars. It also won the Grand Prix at last year’s Cannes Film Festival.

“No to war, and free Palestine!”

Spanish actor Javier Bardem took the stage as a presenter for Best International Feature, but he started his remarks with a quick aside to protest Israeli abuses against Palestine.

A colourful performance with dancing and music from the animation sensation KPop Demon Hunters has lit up the stage with its hit song Golden.

It previously won a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song as well as a Grammy for Best Song Written for Visual Media.

There was a touching moment at the start of cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw’s acceptance speech, when director Ryan Coogler hoisted her child into his arms to carry him to the front of the Dolby Theatre to better see his mom on stage.

“ That’s the kind of guy that I get to make films with,” Durald Arkapaw said, gesturing to Coogler and adding, “Thank you for believing in me and thank you for trusting me.”

Durald Arkapaw also paid tribute to the female filmmakers in the audience.

“I really want all the women in this room to stand up, because I feel like I don’t get here without you guys,” she said.

“ I’ve felt so much love from all the women on this whole campaign and gotten to meet so many people. And I just feel like moments like this happened because of you guys.”