The nominees for the 2026 Academy Awards have finally been unveiled! The full list is viewable here.
Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan’s blockbuster genre-meshing smash Sinners broke the prior record for nominations in a given year, with its 16 nods besting the 14 nominations earned by 1950’s All About Eve, 1997’s Titanic, and 2016’s La La Land. Eve and Titanic went on to win Best Picture, while La La Land lost in infamously embarrassing fashion. Paul Thomas Anderson and Leonardo DiCaprio’s non-blockbuster One Battle After Another, which has been cleaning up on the pre-Oscars awards circuit, nabbed a still-impressive 13 nominations. Both cemented their status as the proverbial frontrunner candidates to take home the Best Picture medal.
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Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein remake for Netflix, the Timothee Chalamet anxiety fest Marty Supreme, and the latest Joachim Trier ensemble drama Sentimental Value each nabbed nine Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. The third straight Yorgos Lanthimos-Emma Stone collaboration Bugonia, the Brad Pitt racing hit F1, Chloe Zhao’s very literally Shakespearean tragedy Hamnet, the international sensation The Secret Agent, and another renowned Netflix drama, Train Dreams, all round out the Best Picture category.
But Wicked: For Good was shut out entirely. The blockbuster musical sequel will not have a presence at the March 15 ceremony, to be hosted by Conan O’Brien for a second straight year.
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Here are our five biggest Academy Awards snubs.
Two of the picks cover whiffs that will cost the ceremony ratings (you can guess which two), while the other three are more about qualitative omissions.
5. Ariana Grande — Best Supporting Actress, Wicked: For Good
Whether or not Wicked: For Good was any good is not the issue. The Oscars have always been somewhat political, and quality is ancillary to popularity and campaigning. Quick, what won Best Picture last year? Exactly. (It was Anora, a solid, surprising choice.)
So whether or not Grande should have made the nominations cut based on merit is immaterial. She’s a big star, and she would have brought eyeballs to a ceremony that has been hemorrhaging viewers lately. Grande did pick up a Best Supporting Actress nomination last year for the original Wicked, and was nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actress for both Wicked movies in back-to-back Actor Awards (formerly the SAG Awards) and Golden Globe Awards. She has also been nominated for two 2026 (pending) Grammys for the original Wicked, so there’s a good chance her mantle will add some more swag this season.
4. Cynthia Erivo — Best Actress, Wicked: For Good
Grande’s costar Cynthia Erivo, who nabbed a Best Actress nomination in the (admittedly better-regarded) first Wicked last year, also didn’t finish among the five finalists for the honor this year.
Erivo has already been nominated for three Academy Awards. As an actress, she has also earned consideration for Harriet. She supplied the song “Stand Up” to that Harriet Tubman biopic, which was recognized with a Best Original Song nomination in 2020. The 39-year-old Brit has already won Emmy, Tony, and Grammy Awards, but it looks like she’ll have to wait at least another year to fill out her EGOT.
3. Richard Linklater, Mike Blizzard, John Sloss — Best Picture, Blue Moon
Indie darling Richard Linklater’s crushing, play-like Blue Moon — the tale of a spiraling Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke) essentially crashing out at the premiere party of his longtime creative collaborator’s first work with another writer — was a quiet, measured movie. The Sony Pictures Classics flick may have struggled to resonate with voters in the same way some showier work did, although Hawke earned a Best Actor nomination and screenwriter Robert Kaplow was awarded a token Best Original Screenplay nod. My money is on Blue Moon finding an audience long after some of these other Best Picture nominees have faded.
2. Michèle Pétin, Laurent Pétin — Best Picture, Nouvelle Vague
A longtime auteur, Richard Linklater submitted a quietly excellent 2025. He actually directed a second great 2025 movie, Nouvelle Vague. In presenting a fictionalized take on the trailblazing production of Jean-Luc Godard’s innovative classic Breathless, Nouvelle Vague stylistically channeled the French New Wave movement it was documenting. The movie’s look, plus the fact that it was mostly in French, may have hurt its chances. It was completely shut out, even after earning a Best Motion Picture — Musical or Comedy nomination at the Golden Globes.
Netflix did score two Best Picture nominations, but my fingers are crossed that Nouvelle Vague — a surprisingly effective movie about making movies, which is a subgenre that can go either way — will find its fans over the coming years and decades.
1. James T. Mockoski, Tara Li-An Smith — Megadoc, Best Documentary Feature
Francis Ford Coppola’s $150 million epic Megalopolis tanked at the box office in 2024 and received mixed notices from the critics and audiences who did manage to see it, per Metacritic. Coppola is now touring around with special screenings of the project, and it may yet find a new cult audience. The Godfather, it ain’t.
But the Mike Figgis-helmed behind-the-scenes documentary on the movie’s troubled production might rank right up there with Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse as one of the best movies about movies ever. Painfully revealing, Megadoc doesn’t spare anyone, and we are treated to some especially entertaining spats between mercurial costar Shia LaBeouf and Coppola. Above all else, though, despite the trials and tribulations of a production that ran through a lot of key crew people, Coppola’s passion for cinema is what shines through most of all. An instructive watch for any film lover.
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