Every year the Oscars are told as a race, and in part they are really: there are favorites, surprises, movies that arrive launched by previous prizes and others that grow to the last. But they are also a good way to understand what Hollywood is awarding, what authors are becoming central, how much weight they have today platforms and why certain titles manage to get out of the niche and impose themselves in public speech. For this reason, an Oscar guide also serves those who do not want to just guess the winners, but want to focus on films, categories and strangeness of an edition that this year has a lot to tell.
That of 2026 is a race that holds together studio cinemas, author films, horror films, eccentric satires, literary adaptations and international productions that are no longer on the margins but enter the heart of the main race. And inside this selection there are also some curiosity not recently: a historical nomination record, a new category introduced for the first time, the increasing weight of streaming and a competition for the Best Film that, at least on paper, is more open and less linear than it seems at first glance. The ten awards for Best Film make up a selection that puts together some very different lines: the high-budget industrial cinema, recognizable autorality, literary adaptation, the international film now fully integrated into the main speech of the Academy and an increasing willingness to reward works that until a few years ago would remain on the edge, such as the horror or the most abnormal satir.
The fact that he immediately moved the story of this edition is that of I peccatori (Sinners), who leads the nominations with 16 nominations. It is an unprecedented number in the history of the Oscars, more than 14 obtained in the past by Eva against Eva, Titanic and La Land. The result counts for the record itself, but it counts above all because it concerns a film that works with elements of horror, music and popular show, territories that the Academy has often rewarded only in part, especially in the technical categories.
Next to the numerical record, there is then the general picture of the race. The ten Best Film candidates are Bugonia, F1, Frankenstein, Hamnet, Marty Supreme, One Battle after Another, The Secret Agent, Sentimental Value, Sinners and Train Dreams. It is a list that holds together Hollywood, platforms, European cinema and Latin American cinema, and that confirms that for some years the main category has become the place where the Academy tries to represent the industry as a whole rather than a single idea of prestige.
Among the most observed titles is One Battle after Another, translated into Italy as One Battle after another, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. It is one of the films that arrive at the ceremony with the most solid reputation in the season of prizes and has the typical profile of the central contender: canon author, cast fortissimo, ambitious narrative system and a combination of political tension, irony and show that makes it accessible and authoritative together. Around the film, a part of Anderson’s critical speech was also focused, a director who was very recognized but never fully rewarded by Academy.
Its position in the race does not only depend on the value attributed to the film, but also on a quite typical mechanism of the Oscars: when an author accumulates over the years prestige, candidatures and transversal consent without winning, an almost repairing thrust can be formed. This is not enough alone to guarantee a victory, but it counts in the industrial tale of the season, and in the case of Anderson the candidacy of the film is not only in the category of Best Film, but also of Regia and Screenplay adapted, among the most important ones.
The film that most seems to be able to contend with that centrality is the aforementioned sinners, directed by Ryan Coogler. Its strength lies in the way it combines formal ambition, pop recognizability and thematic weight. Michael B. Jordan’s double role has become one of the most controversial elements of the season, and he has also earned a prize at the last Actor Awards, but the film has also collected attention for photography, editing, soundtrack and visual system. In other words, it did not come as a simple phenomenon of consensus, but as a title capable of agreeing many branches of the Academy.
If he wins, the sinners would mark an important symbolic passage also for the relationship between Oscar and genres. The horror, except for rare exceptions, has often been treated as a language to be recognized indirectly, rewarding perhaps interpreters or some technical aspects such as make-up and costumes, but leaving it out of the center of the hierarchy. The fact that a horror film is today the most nominated title of the year suggests that something has moved, not only in the taste of the Academy but in the way gender cinema is perceived by industry.
Another decisive line of the race is the weight of international cinema. The Secret Agent of Kleber Mendonça Filho and Sentimental Value by Joachim Trier are both candidates for Best Film and Best International Film. One thing that was unthinkable today is no longer an absolute anomaly, and this tells how international films are no longer confined to their category of origin. For Brazil, The Secret Agent also arrives after I’m Still Here’s 2025 victory as Best International Film, and this increases the focus around the title.
The Secret Agent presents itself as a political thriller working on the memory of repression and the legacy of dictatorships, inserting in a structure of tension a precise historical matter. It is the kind of film that Oscars can work well when they manage to hold stylistic control together by riding the historical moment, and today more than ever this is real. This also adds Wagner Moura’s candidacy as a leading actor, who has contributed to giving momentum to the film.
Sentimental Value, however, has built its path on another shade. It is a family drama that revolves around the absence, resentment and the possibility that art becomes an imperfect tool to re-enter relationships already compromised. Joachim Trier, together with the co-writer Eskil Vogt, has been working for years on characters unable to simplify their pain; here this stretch is combined with a very strong cast, from Renate Reinsve to Stellan Skarsgård to Elle Fanning.
And then there’s Netflix. Frankenstein of Guillermo del Toro is the great candidate of the streaming platform. Del Toro brings his best-known repertoire to the project: the monstrous as a form of the tragic, the artisanal care of the image, the attention to scenography, costumes and make-up. The film seems particularly competitive in the technical categories, while it remains less clear if it can really impose itself to the bottom of the main race.
Unlike the F1 position, Joseph Kosinski’s film with Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Javier Bardem and Kerry Condon. It is the title that most of all represents the classic side of Hollywood studio cinema, with the great star, sport from the very high generational dynamic to the center, the ransom story and the show built for a more general public possible. With the presence in the enlarged cinquina of the Best Film, it shows how the Academy still highlights products for the general public.
Marty Supreme is one of the most eccentric cases of the selection. Directed by Josh Safdie and interpreted by Timothée Chalamet, he takes the form of sports biopic only to sabotage it from the inside. More than the uplifting rise of a champion, he tells an unpleasant, manipulative and often repulsive protagonist. It is a deviation that has rewarded, making it one of the most discussed and acclaimed titles by critics, keeping well together rhythm, discomfort and attraction.
Still different is Bugonia, the new film by Yorgos Lanthimos. As often happens in the cinema of the Greek director, the point is not so much the plausibility of the plot as the system of moral and perceptive tensions that the film sets in motion. The story of the kidnapping of a company manager by a convinced man who is an alien serves above all to reason on today’s paranoia, that made of conspiracy theories and mystifications of reality. It is a divisive film by definition, but precisely because it is very consistent with the recent trajectory of the Academy, which in recent years has shown greater tolerance towards spigolose and formally not accommodating works.
Hamnet instead brings another of the strong tendencies of the award winning cinema: the high-profile literary adaptation. Chloé Zhao addresses Maggie O’Farrell’s novel by moving the center of the story to Agnes and the family mourning that precedes, accompanies and surpasses the figure of Shakespeare. Jessie Buckley immediately entered the most popular actresses of the season, and the film overall collected consensus for the ability to transform a historical and literary matter into an intimate drama readable by a non-specialist audience.
Train Dreams, taken from Denis Johnson’s short novel and directed by Clint Bentley, is the least noisy title of the race. His candidacy surprised many observers because it was not born from a particularly striking campaign or an immediate media centrality. It tells an ordinary life, work, loss and the American landscape. In the Oscars enlarged to ten titles, such films can find space when intercepting widespread respect, perhaps not enough to dominate the evening but enough to enter the main group.
This edition also marks the debut of the Oscar for Casting, a new category introduced from the films released in 2025. The candidates are Hamnet, Marty Supreme, One Battle after Another, The Secret Agent and Sinners. Recognizing casting means recognizing that the construction of a film also passes by the selection, combination and balance of interpreters, not only by their individual performance.
Particularly crowded race that of the actors, with Michael B. Jordan for the sinners, Leonardo DiCaprio for A Battle after the other, Timothée Chalamet for Marty Supreme and Wagner Moura for The Secret Agent who bring in the same category four very different ways of occupying the center of a film. Among actresses, Jessie Buckley for Hamnet, Renate Reinsve for Sentimental Value and Emma Stone for Bugonia show instead how much the weight of female interpretations this year is linked to films strongly built around fragile, disturbed or wounded subjectivity.
For the Italian public, the 2026 edition has at least two additional reasons of interest. The first is the fast availability of many candidates on the platforms, which makes the race to the Oscars less distant and more followed also outside the festival circuit. The second is less positive: the absence of Italy from the main nominations. The film chosen as a national candidate for the international category, Familia di Francesco Costabile, failed to enter the shortlist and the Italian cinema remained out of the final selection.
L’articolo A guide to understand everything (but all) of these Oscar 2026 comes from IlNewyorkese.