I want to preface this article by saying that the Oscars are impossible to accurately predict – but that doesn’t mean I won’t try. With the 2026 awards season culminating in the glitziest of Hollywood ceremonies this Sunday (15 March), all eyes are on the cast and crew of One Battle After Another, Sinners, Marty Supreme and Hamnet to see who takes home the biggest awards in the world of cinema. But, unlike previous seasons, when the winners seemed like foregone conclusions, at the 2026 Oscars everything remains to play for. 

The Oscars are (usually) best predicted by the awards season ceremonies that precede them, which this year kicked off on 4 January with the Critics Choice Awards, followed by a series of successes and snubs at the Golden Globes, BAFTAs and Actors Awards. Each ceremony is a clear indication of who will take the Oscars – but not this year. 

Thanks to what critics will tell you is one of the strongest nominee rosters in recent history, three of the four awards saw different actors, actresses and films win the top accolades. So, with new frontrunners emerging practically every week, there’s a lot more guesswork involved when it comes to this year’s Oscar predictions. 

The Oscar nominations were revealed at the end of January, with Sinners storming ahead with a record-breaking 16 nominations, surpassing All About Eve (1950), Titanic (1997) and La La Land (2016) for most total nominations. Final voting took place between 26 February and 5 March and included 10,000 members of the Academy. But with shock wins at the Actors Awards (formerly SAG Awards) last weekend – we’re looking at you Michael B Jordan and Amy Madigan – the Oscars are anything but confirmed. Here’s who we think will win and why. 

Best Picture: One Battle After Another

Nominees: Bugonia; F1; Frankenstein; Hamnet; Marty Supreme; One Battle After Another; The Secret Agent; Sinners; Sentimental Value; Train Dreams

Could win: Sinners

One Battle After Another has swept up at the 2026 awards season, with 13 gongs so far, indicating undeniable Oscars success. In fact, no other film has even come close; out of the entire list of nominees, only Sinners won Best Ensemble at the Actors Awards and Hamnet scooped the drama award at the Golden Globes. Not quite the string of wins One Battle After Another has gained, with judges and audiences clearly gripped by  Paul Thomas Anderson’s satirical action-thriller, based on Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland. 

The only potential rival which could rear its head is Sinners. A serious BBC blunder at the BAFTAs left Sinners co-stars Michael B Jordan and Delroy Lindo victims of a racial slur while on stage – which, despite a two-hour editing lag, was not cut and instead aired to the world – and may have induced a flurry of votes in support of the Black community. Add to that the film’s recent win at the Actor Awards, which took place in the middle of the Academy’s voting week, and it could be neck and neck with One Battle After Another. It’s not a given, but a possibility, and Sinners has proven it’s certainly worthy of an award. 

Best Actor: Michael B Jordan for Sinners

Timothée Chalamet at the 2026 BAFTAs

Michael B Jordan at the 2026 BAFTAs. Image: Shutterstock/Fred Duval

Nominees: Timothée Chalamet, Marty Supreme; Leonardo DiCaprio, One Battle After Another; Michael B Jordan, Sinners; Ethan Hawke, Blue Moon; Wagner Moura, The Secret Agent

Could win: Timothée Chalamet for Marty Supreme

Timothée Chalamet becoming an Oscar winner at the tender age of 30 looked like a sure thing at the beginning of the year, when he won at both the Golden Globes and Critics’ Choice awards for his role in Marty Supreme, but the gong is seemingly slipping from his grasp. Aside from a bout of bad press – those viral comments claiming no one cares about ballet and opera haven’t put him in the best light – he has since lost Best Actor twice in a row, with surprising victories from I Swear’s Robert Aramayo at the BAFTAs and Sinners’ Michael B Jordan at the Actors Awards (long a strong indicator for Oscars success). In fact, it’s enough to make me believe Sunday could see Jordan win his first-ever Academy Award. 

It’s also worth highlighting the vastly different subject matters of Marty Supreme and Sinners; the former is about a ruthless white ping-pong prodigy on a self-involved pursuit of greatness, while the latter is about twin brothers (both played by Jordan) returning to 1932 Mississippi to escape their past only to find themselves confronted with a monstrous evil, covering themes of racism, systematic oppression and white supremacy. It’s fair to say Marty Supreme doesn’t win the heavyweight contest here. 

Elsewhere, Hollywood veterans Ethan Hawke and Leonardo DiCaprio – no stranger to a snub after failing to win seven of his eight Academy Award nominations until 2016’s The Revenant – haven’t had a look in. While One Battle After Another has scooped plenty of gongs, its leading man Dicaprio has not – and I can’t see that changing on Sunday. 

Best Actress: Jessie Buckley for Hamnet

Nominees: 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

Could win: Jessie Buckley

Another not-so-close call is Jessie Buckley to win Best Actress for her role as Agnes in Hamnet. The Irish actress has scooped every gong going at this year’s awards and I doubt there will be any shocks on Sunday (to the point where I couldn’t even name anyone else as a potential winner). Coupled with rave reviews for her performance in Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Bride!, which premiered last week, Buckley has proved she’s no one-trick pony. 

Academy favourite Emma Stone has been left out in the cold for her role in Bugonia despite already having two historic wins in her cabinet for La La Land (2016) and Poor Things (2024). The latter, like Bugonia, was directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, so perhaps the Academy views the roles as too similar to be worthy of another award. Elsewhere, Kate Hudson’s hopes for gold, 25 years after her first and only Oscar nomination, this time for her role in Neil Diamond tribute band biopic, Song Sung Blue, have been seriously dampened with zero success so far this season. 

Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson for One Battle After Another

Nominees: Ryan Coogler, Sinners; Josh Safdie, Marty Supreme; Joachim Trier, Sentimental Value; Chloé Zhao, Hamnet; Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another

Could win: Ryan Coogler for Sinners

To say that Paul Thomas Anderson is overdue an Oscar is an understatement. In fact, he sits among the Academy Awards’ biggest losers, having been nominated 11 times but always missing out on the night. His work on One Battle After Another could change that fate though, having won both Best Director and Adapted Screenplay at the BAFTAs, Golden Globes and Critics’ Choice awards. 

Aside from this clean sweep nodding to Oscars success, the Academy also has a penchant for rewarding long-standing and successful careers – and Anderson’s is one of Hollywood’s greatest. For the past 30 years, he has consistently produced critically acclaimed, original, and impactful films, with his oeuvre including Boogie Nights (1998), There Will Be Blood (2007), and Phantom Thread (2017). While Anderson himself is yet to win Best Director, his films have featured heavily  among past Academy Awards nominations. Could this be his year? I hope so. 

Again, the only rival here is Ryan Coogler, famed for his work on Creed (2015) and Black Panther (2018) and, in this awards season, Sinners; all of which star Michael B Jordan and consistently explore themes of race and systematic inequality in a nuanced way. Both Creed and Black Panther found favour with the Academy Awards, BAFTAs and Golden Globes so recognising the work of its pioneering director is also overdue. Plus, with Sinners breaking the all-time record for most Oscar nominations and Coogler in contention to be the first Black director to win Best Director, this Sunday could be a historic night for him. 

Best Supporting Actress: Teyana Taylor for One Battle After Another

Teyana Taylor at the 2026 BAFTAs. Image: Getty

Amy Madigan at the Actors Awards in March 2026. Image: Alamy

Nominees: Elle Fanning, Sentimental Value; Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Sentimental Value; Amy Madigan, Weapons; Wunmi Mosaku, Sinners; Teyana Taylor, One Battle After Another

Could win: Amy Madigan for Weapons

This category has endured its fair share of controversy in recent years. 2025 saw Zoe Saldaña take home the gong for her role in Emilia Pérez, which had many up in arms about ‘category fraud’ because Saldaña’s seemed more like a leading character than a supporting one. And while neither got a look in at the Oscars, Wicked’s Ariana Grande was nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the Golden Globes and Critics' Choice Awards so as to not be in direct competition with co-star Cynthia Erivo but, again, both roles were arguably as weighty. 

This year, thankfully, the Academy has nominated women worthy of the supporting role title, playing smaller but no less vital parts with storylines changing the course of their films. Wunmi Mosaku’s role as Annie in Sinners is central to the plot, and saw her win a BAFTA, but she remains third in line for the Oscars gong following Amy Madigan’s early success at Critics' Choice and, more recently, the Actors Awards. It marks a late-career resurgence for 75-year-old Madigan, who was on the verge of quitting before she was cast in Weapons. Or, as she told the audience during her acceptance speech at the Actors Awards last weekend: “It’s such an honour to be here. I’ve been doing this a long a** time.” 

To my mind, however, Madigan is likely to be pipped to the post by her only clear competition, Teyana Taylor, who enjoyed success at the Golden Globes for her role in One Battle After Another. This category is all to play for. 

Best Supporting Actor: Sean Penn for One Battle After Another

Stellan Skarsgård at the 2026 BAFTAs.

Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro and Leonardo DiCaprio attend the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Image: Shutterstock/Patrick Hagot

Nominees: Benicio del Toro, One Battle After Another; Jacob Elordi, Frankenstein; Delroy Lindo, Sinners; Sean Penn, One Battle After Another; Stellan Skarsgård, Sentimental Value

Could win: Stellan Skarsgård for Sentimental Value

If Best Supporting Actress was tricky to call, its male counterpart is borderline impossible. Early predictors saw Stellan Skarsgård posed to take the Oscar for his role in decorated Norwegian film Sentimental Value after a win at the Golden Globes. But Jacob Elordi won at Critics’ Choice and then Sean Penn swooped in (not literally, because he wasn’t present at either) and clinched the gongs at the BAFTAs and Actors Awards. 2026’s unpredictable awards season has never been more apparent than in this race. 

Delroy Lindo, at 73, certainly deserves a shout out for his role in Sinners and is long overdue some awards success given his lengthy 50-year career. Many are also rooting for Benicio del Toro, who first won Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 2001 for Traffic and is more than worthy of winning again for his brief but wholesome role in an otherwise emotionally-charged and erratic One Battle After Another. Watch this space – and tune in on Sunday night to see how right, or wrong, I was.

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