Welcome to Statue Season! Each week leading up to the 98th Academy Awards ceremony, we’ll be checking in on the closest races, the winningest narratives, and the plain old movie magic that will decide who’s taking home the gold on March 15, 2026. This week, we’re analyzing the Oscars short lists, our first preview of the Academy’s nominations.
Try as we might to use other awards circuit prizes—and, you know, watching movies—to inform our Oscar predictions, the Academy is always going to pull something that we just won’t see coming. So the Oscars short lists, which were announced for 12 categories on Tuesday, are crucial as the Academy Awards picture starts to come into focus a month out from the nominations. The Oscars short lists are whittled-down pools of contenders for a number of the Academy’s technical categories, like Best Visual Effects and Best Sound, as well as for non–general field categories, like Best International Feature (a hotly contested race this year) and Best Documentary Feature. Even though the top prizes for acting and directing are still up in the air, we now have some insight into what films are on the Academy’s radar. And as you may have expected, the short lists contain some of that classic Oscars silliness we all know and love. (For one, “Academy Award nominee The Alto Knights” is now a possibly imminent phrase.) Plus, we got short lists for two new categories this year: Best Casting, which will be a brand-new award at the 2026 ceremony, and Best Cinematography, which has never been a short-listed category before. Let’s dive into the surprises and snubs to see what this new information can tell us about where the Academy Award nominations are going.
Is Sinners the stand-alone Best Picture front-runner?
One Battle After Another has been the Best Picture contender to beat since it kicked off Oscar season in late September. Sinners and Hamnet have challenged it, but based on the returns from the early awards circuit, the latter has started to fall behind. Sinners and One Battle have already snagged a ton of precursor awards from the Gothams, the National Board of Review, and various critics circles, and Best Picture is starting to look more and more like a two-horse race. (Or, I guess, a race between a vampire and a guy in a bathrobe.) But the Oscars short lists announcement might have revealed that Sinners has an edge over Paul Thomas Anderson’s film. Sinners is tied for the most short-listed film this year, nabbing eight mentions in all seven categories it’s eligible for. One Battle, on the other hand, earned five mentions. Sinners was included on the short lists for Best Visual Effects and Best Original Song, scoring two mentions in that category; One Battle wasn't included on either (and didn't submit a candidate for Best Original Song). Hamnet landed only three mentions.
Sinners is a well-rounded film in terms of its awards campaign—it’s got original music, period costumes, monster effects, and distinct sets that are propping it up in the technical categories as it also pursues wins for its actors, director, and the film overall. The Academy could see Sinners’ success in so many areas as more reason to award it Best Picture, as we saw with Oppenheimer’s campaign in 2023, which resulted in wins for its music and cinematography as well as for its actors on its way to a Best Picture victory. Short list mentions don’t necessarily correlate with Best Picture wins—last year’s victor, Anora, wasn’t short-listed in a single category—but even if Sinners does miss out on the top prize, don’t be surprised if it gnaws its way to the most statuettes on Oscar night in March.
Ding-dong, Wicked: For Good isn’t dead yet.
We were on the verge of mourning the Wicked Oscar campaign after For Good completely missed out on a Best Motion Picture nod from the Golden Globes last week. But that goes to show that the Oscars and the Golden Globes have a lot less overlap than you’d think—Wicked: For Good was tied with Sinners as the most recognized film in the Oscars’ short lists, also landing eight mentions in all seven categories that it’s eligible for. That includes two mentions in the Best Original Song short list (for “The Girl in the Bubble” and “There’s No Place Like Home”) and a mention for Best Cinematography (over visually striking Oscar players like No Other Choice and The Secret Agent, even though cinematography has been a point of criticism for both Wicked films).
Wicked also performed well in the Academy Awards short lists last year—it was the second-most recognized film, with four mentions—and that translated to only two wins on Oscar night, both of which were in craft categories. But the fact that For Good doubled its short list mentions since the franchise’s last outing might indicate that its standing with the Academy has only strengthened, even though the second film received worse reviews than its predecessor. (Remember, no matter how many times you log a one-star Wicked: For Good review on Letterboxd, armchair critics don’t vote for Oscars!) There are certainly examples of films dominating the technical awards but coming up empty in the top categories—Mad Max: Fury Road comes to mind—but whether or not Wicked: For Good defies gravity to leap into the Best Picture slate, expect to see some Oz on Oscar night.
We got our first glimpse of the new Best Casting Oscar.
Ten films were selected to advance in the Best Casting category, giving us our first preview of the Academy’s newest award. Naturally, this award has been difficult to predict—Variety has had Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague making the cut for the past few weeks, and it didn’t even end up appearing on the short list. If you assess the 10 remaining contenders, there doesn’t appear to be a clear school of thought that the Academy is adhering to with the award. The category unsurprisingly favors strong ensemble films like One Battle After Another, Sinners, and Marty Supreme, which not only feature Oscar front-runners in the lead roles but are also littered with memorable supporting performances. (Jay Kelly, which features a cast of major movie stars, is notably absent from the short list, perhaps because none of its actors are in significant contention for an individual award.) There are also appearances by two-handers like Frankenstein, Hamnet, Wicked: For Good, and Sentimental Value. Most surprising, though, are the mentions for Sirāt (more on that later) and Weapons. Weapons is an ensemble film that shifts perspectives among many different characters, but I would venture to guess that its run for Best Casting is also being boosted by Amy Madigan’s performance. Best Supporting Actress is one of the few Oscar categories Weapons has a shot at getting nominated in, and Madigan has surged in that race over the past couple of months. This could be a sign for future Best Casting races—perhaps one very memorable performance is enough to elevate a film into contention for the prize.
A new challenger has entered the Best International Feature race.
As the Academy has recognized more and more international films in its general field categories over the past decade, Best International Feature has grown quite competitive. After Norway’s Sentimental Value and France’s It Was Just an Accident battled it out for the Palme d’Or at Cannes in May (the latter won), this year’s race was shaping up to be the 98th Oscars’ fiercest category. The competition heated up again when four Best International Feature hopefuls—the two aforementioned films, along with South Korea’s No Other Choice and Brazil’s The Secret Agent—earned Best Motion Picture nods from the Golden Globes last week.
Now, we have yet another challenger: Spain’s Sirāt is perhaps the biggest winner from the Oscars short lists. It earned mentions in five categories, including Best Score and Best Sound (the only non-American film in those categories) as well as Best Casting and Best Cinematography. Very few Americans have seen Sirāt—it was in theaters for only a one-week qualifying run in New York and Los Angeles and won’t get a proper release until January—but that didn’t stop it from being the most short-listed international film this year. The film—which follows a father who, alongside his son, searches for his missing daughter at a rave in Morocco—can only juice its campaign with a strong theatrical showing, which will no doubt be boosted by the awards buzz. However, the momentum in the Best International Feature race can shift on a dime—last year, France’s Emilia Pérez was the overall most nominated film at the Academy Awards, and we know how that turned out. Could Sirāt sustain this new attention and usurp international front-runners like Sentimental Value and It Was Just an Accident to catapult itself into the general field Best Picture race?
Sirāt’s surge also raises a question: Can Neon land all five nominations in the Best International Feature race? Like, is that allowed? I’m genuinely asking! After parking outside Cannes and ordering one of everything, Neon controls the North American distribution rights to It Was Just an Accident, Sentimental Value, The Secret Agent, No Other Choice, and Sirāt, which very well could be the 2026 Best International Feature slate. Vulture reported that the only time a single studio has dominated an entire five-nominee Oscar category was in 1975, when Paramount Pictures earned all five nods for Best Costume Design. Tunisia’s The Voice of Hind Rajab, distributed by indie studio Willa, looks like the most likely to spoil Neon’s category sweep. Either way, other awards-hopeful studios probably won’t want to let Neon buy up everything at Cannes again next year.
Can anyone not named Diane Warren beat KPop Demon Hunters for Best Original Song?
We all know that, with her 10 nominations since 2014 (and, famously, no wins), Diane Warren is an annual auto-nom for Best Original Song at the Academy Awards. This year, however, her short-listed song is from a documentary that’s not insignificantly about how she’s never won a competitive Oscar. “Dear Me” from Diane Warren: Relentless is the generic empowerment ballad you’d expect from those context clues, and it will, of course, earn Warren her 17th Oscar nomination. But come on, after a whole documentary was made about it, her only destiny is to lose yet again.
So that leaves three spots open for other songs to challenge KPop Demon Hunters’ “Golden,” which spent eight weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 this year. Sinners and Wicked each got two short-listed songs apiece, and Miley Cyrus and Ed Sheeran got mentions for their contributions to Avatar: Fire and Ash and F1, respectively. (Notably snubbed was the Amanda Seyfried–led historical musical The Testament of Ann Lee, which has gotten excellent advance reviews and features new music by Best Original Score incumbent Daniel Blumberg.) My money’s on Sinners’ “I Lied to You” to put some pressure on HUNTR/X. It always helps when an original song is used in a memorable way—like when RRR’s suspender-stretching choreography led “Naatu Naatu” to the statuette—and “I Lied to You” soundtracks what will probably be remembered as Sinners’ most iconic scene: Preacher Boy’s juke joint performance that transcends time. You’ve gotta summon spirits if you want to take down something as powerful as KPop Demon Hunters.
Stock Watch
To paraphrase one of cinema’s great stockbrokers: Nobody knows if an Oscar stock is going to go up, down, sideways, or in circles. In this section, we’ll evaluate who’s on the up-and-up and whose momentum is sputtering out as the competition across categories heats up.
Stock up: Frankenstein’s awards campaign is alive—it notched the third-most short list mentions behind Sinners and Wicked: For Good. Ryan Coogler’s bid for Best Director is on the rise after Sinners’ strong showing on the short lists. Some type of award has to be given out for Michael B. Jordan and Jesse Plemons’s dap during their Actors on Actors conversation for Variety.
Stock down: After overperforming in the Golden Globes nominations, No Other Choice took a hit, with only one appearance in the Oscars short lists. Sean Penn ceded the lead in Gold Derby’s Best Supporting Actor odds to Sentimental Value’s Stellan Skarsgard after early awards indicated that Penn might split the vote with his One Battle costar Benicio del Toro. George Clooney’s meta performance might not be enough to turn the Academy’s head after Jay Kelly missed the cut for Best Casting—at least the real-life version of Clooney can always fall back on Casamigos.
