Oscars 2026: How to Watch and Everything Else You Should Know

We're conscionable a fewer days distant from the 98th Academy Awards. Ahead of this year's Oscars celebrating 2025 successful film, we're present to stock however you tin watch, positive interruption down the nominees, host, presenters and performers, and what's caller for the 2026 ceremony.

Going into the show, Sinners leads the mode with a record-breaking 16 nominations, beating the antecedently held 14-nomination grounds necktie betwixt All About Eve, Titanic, and La La Land. One Battle After Another takes 2nd spot with 13 nominations.

Read connected beneath for everything other you request to cognize astir the Oscars.

When are the Oscars?

The Oscars volition instrumentality spot connected March 15, 2026, from the Dolby Theater successful Los Angeles astatine the caller clip of 7pm ET/4pm PT/11pm GMT. The broadcast is expected to tally for 3 hours, but you tin astir surely number connected it going long.

How tin I ticker the Oscars?

The Oscars volition beryllium be televised connected your section ABC station. It volition besides beryllium streaming unrecorded connected Hulu. (We're inactive a fewer years retired from the Oscars connected YouTube.) If you're funny successful the pre-show arrivals and reddish carpet interviews, ABC's sum volition statesman astatine 3:30pm ET/12:30pm PT and E!'s volition footwear disconnected astatine 4pm ET/1pm PT.

Who is hosting the Oscars?

Conan O'Brien – who besides starred successful If I Had Legs I'd Kick You alongside Best Actress nominee Rose Byrne – is hosting the Oscars for the 2nd twelvemonth successful a row. O'Brien was announced arsenic the 2026 big 2 weeks aft the 2025 Oscars, saying successful a statement, "The lone crushed I’m hosting the Oscars adjacent twelvemonth is that I privation to perceive Adrien Brody decorativeness his speech.” To refresh your memory, Brody dragged connected for astir six minutes accepting the grant for Best Actor for his relation successful The Brutalist.

"There'll beryllium immoderate explosions, CGI volition beryllium used," O'Brien told ABC News astir Round 2. "I spot this 2nd Oscars arsenic an accidental to instrumentality things up a notch," particularly present that he's well-informed connected important standards and practices, similar ever keeping an Oscar statuette upright.

What's caller astatine the Oscars this year?

The Academy Awards are rolling retired a caller class for the archetypal clip since 2001's summation of Best Animated Feature Film: Achievement successful Casting volition get its debut aft being announced successful 2024. The grant volition spell to a casting director, but the criteria for winning sounds unexpectedly much analyzable than idiosyncratic who tin enactment unneurotic a database of top-notch actors. The first-ever nominees are:

• Nina Gold, Hamnet
• Jennifer Venditti, Marty Supreme
• Cassandra Kulukundis, One Battle aft Another
• Gabriel Domingues, The Secret Agent
• Francine Maisler, Sinners

The adjacent caller class volition travel astatine the 2028 Oscars, erstwhile the Academy yet acknowledges stunts arsenic the bone-breaking creation signifier it is.

Who is presenting astatine the 2026 Oscars?

Presenters include: Will Arnett, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Robert Downey Jr., Anne Hathaway, Paul Mescal, Gwyneth Paltrow, Chris Evans, Kumail Nanjiani, and Maya Rudolph. Last year's winners Adrien Brody, Kieran Culkin, Mikey Madison, and Zoe Saldaña, arsenic good arsenic 2025 nominee Demi Moore, are besides among the radical of presenters. Javier Bardem and Chase Infiniti, who starred respectively successful F1 and One Battle After Another but did not person idiosyncratic nominations, volition besides present. (Infiniti's omission successful the Supporting Actress contention is considered 1 of the large snubs of this year's awards.)

Who is performing astatine the Oscars?

The telecast volition see 2 large "moments" that the amusement producers are calling "more than conscionable performances — they grow into cinematic tributes that observe the narration betwixt euphony and storytelling and wherefore these films resonated truthful profoundly with audiences astir the world." These are "Golden" from KPop Demon Hunters and "I Lied to You" from Sinners, some nominated for Best Original Song this year. (The different nominated tracks — "Train Dreams” from Best Picture nominee Train Dreams, “Dear Me” from the documentary Diane Warren: Restless, and “Sweet Dreams of Joy” from the documentary Viva Verdi! — volition not beryllium performed live.)

The singing voices down Huntr/x — Ejae, Audrey Nuna, and Rei Ami — volition execute "Golden," accompanied by "a fusion of accepted Korean instrumentalists and dance, celebrating the folklore and taste inspiration that anchors the communicative down this animated blockbuster."

Sinners' breakout prima Miles Caton and singer-songwriter Raphael Saadiq volition execute "I Lied To You," officially described arsenic exploring the "role euphony plays successful the film’s storytelling for a cinematic unrecorded moment." (Hopefully that means it attempts to replicate the electric, glorious fever imagination of the film's country the opus comes from.) Blues musicians Buddy Guy and Bobby Rush, rapper Shaboozey, ballet dancer Misty Copeland, and actresses Li Jun Li and Jayme Lawson volition join, on with musicians Brittany Howard of the Alabama Shakes, Eric Gales, Alice Smith, and Christone “Kingfish” Ingram.

Josh Groban and the Los Angeles Master Chorale volition besides perform, we'll speculate during the In Memoriam segment.

What are this year's Oscars nominees?

Read connected for the nominees successful immoderate of the apical categories, but you tin cheque retired the afloat database of nominees here.

Best Picture:

• Bugonia
• F1
• Frankenstein
• Hamnet
• Marty Supreme
• One Battle aft Another
• The Secret Agent
• Sentimental Value
• Sinners
• Train Dreams

Best Actor:

• Timothée Chalamet, Marty Supreme
• Leonardo DiCaprio, One Battle aft Another
• Ethan Hawke, Blue Moon
• Michael B. Jordan, Sinners
• Wagner Moura, The Secret Agent

Best Actress:

• Jessie Buckley, Hamnet
• Rose Byrne, If I Had Legs I'd Kick You
• Kate Hudson, Song Sung Blue
• Renate Reinsve, Sentimental Value
• Emma Stone, Bugonia

Best Director:

• Chloé Zhao, Hamnet
• Josh Safdie, Marty Supreme
• Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle aft Another
• Joachim Trier, Sentimental Value
• Ryan Coogler, Sinners

Which nominees are expected to win?

Though the ballot is simply a batch of the aforesaid movies being celebrated successful many categories, a wide victor hasn't pulled up successful galore of the cardinal races, with a fewer exceptions. KPop Demon Hunters decidedly has Best Animated Feature Film successful the bag. Best Actress volition probably go to Jessie Buckley arsenic Shakespeare's grieving woman Agnes successful Hamnet, contempt the earned fervor astir Rose Byrne's show successful If I Had Legs I'd Kick You. The screenplay awards volition repesctively spell to Ryan Coogler and Paul Thomas Anderson for Best Original and Best Adapted. Outside of that, different categories are a coin toss, usually betwixt One Battle After Another and Sinners.

Though Timothée Chalamet was practically the presumptive victor successful Best Actor arsenic a ping pong hustler successful Marty Supreme a fewer months ago, taking the aboriginal triumph astatine the Golden Globes, that stance has presumption has cooled; the SAG Award went to Michael B. Jordan for his duplicate brothers, Stack and Smoke, from Sinners. Another cardinal triumph from the Actor Awards was Amy Madigan taking the trophy for Supporting Actress arsenic Aunt Gladys successful Weapons, which radical person taken arsenic an indicator of an impending Oscars triumph implicit Teyana Taylor's revolutionary Perfidia Beverly Hills successful One Battle After Another.

What's the contention this year?

There are two, benignant of. First of all, this is the archetypal twelvemonth wherever AMPAS voters indispensable attest to having really seen each of the films they're voting on, a caller regularisation imposed for the archetypal clip (!!) a fewer months aft past year's awards. (Voters tin log this aft watching films done the Academy screening app, which would automatically way whether oregon not thing has been played, oregon click a container that pledges they've seen it successful a theatre oregon by different means.)

The different one, closest to the ceremonial and truthful the 1 that volition unrecorded connected successful the Discourse up until the event, is the information that Timothée Chalamet dissed opera and ballet, successful the discourse of interest astir the authorities of movie theaters.

"I respect radical — and I've done it myself — who spell connected a speech amusement and say, ‘Hey, we've got to support movie theaters alive, y'know, we've gotta support this genre alive," helium said during a Variety and CNN municipality Hall with his Interstellar co-star Matthew McConaughey. "And different portion of maine feels similar if radical privation to spot it, similar Barbie, similar Oppenheimer, they're going to spell spot it and spell retired of their mode to beryllium large and arrogant astir it. I don’t privation to beryllium moving successful ballet oregon opera oregon things wherever it’s like, ‘Hey! Keep this happening alive,’ adjacent though nary 1 cares astir this anymore. All respect to the ballet and opera radical retired there. I conscionable mislaid 14 cents successful viewership. I conscionable took shots for nary reason.”

"That's not a shot, I perceive what you're saying," McConaughey responded.

The video clip started going viral precocious past week, astir 2 weeks aft it was primitively posted — after the model for Oscars voting had closed connected March 5. It won't straight interaction his chances, but it's capable to rile patrons and providers of the good arts: Many institutions, including the Metropolitan Opera, the English National Opera, and the Royal Ballet and Opera, posted rebuttals connected societal media praising their artisans oregon making a lawsuit for him to travel to a show. Plenty much person fired back, calling his instrumentality shades of "disrespectul". The comments made their mode to The View and Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update, wherever Colin Jost quipped that Chalamet “made the remark connected a property circuit for his movie about... ping-pong.”

Adam Bankhurst is simply a writer for IGN. You tin travel him connected X/Twitter @AdamBankhurst, Instagram, and TikTok, and perceive to his show, Talking Disney Magic.

Leanne Butkovic is an Editorial Project Manager astatine IGN, wherever they've besides written astir movies, TV, and games.