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2026-27 Oscar Nomination Predictions
And they’re off: The 2027 Oscar race is already in full swing, with multiple top contenders vying for consideration, starting with summer blockbuster The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan’s epic adaptation of the Homer poem that could break the single-year record for most nominations set by Sinners in January. But Nolan’s latest — his follow-up to the best picture-winning Oppenheimer — isn’t the only massive feature in contention this year: In March, Amazon MGM released Project Hail Mary with Ryan Gosling (expect multiple nominations for that one), while several major titles debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in May, including La Bola Negra (acquired after the fest by Netflix) and Palme d’Or winner Fjord. Those are just some of the titles our roster of awards experts expect to factor heavily into this year’s Oscar race — our group of prestige pundits includes The Ankler’s Katey Rich and Christopher Rosen, and top journalists and thought-leaders from across the internet. Read on for all their picks in the top categories, including best picture, best director, best actor, best actress and more.
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Oscar Predictions by Category
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Updates from the experts
Andrew Garfield’s Sam Altman: So Evil, It’s Oscar-Worthy
- Christopher Rosen
All the excitement in the movie world has been in Manhattan this week, where the New York Film Festival has brought splashy world premieres of Oscar contenders like Tony Gilroy’s Behemoth! and Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial.
On Monday, as the crowd filed into Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall for the world premiere of Artificial, I chatted with fellow Prestige Junkie Pundits Sophia Ciminello and Matt Neglia about Digger and whether it had the juice to make it through Oscar season despite calamitous reviews and worse box office. (My take: It does, but we can save that debate for another time.)
Artificial features the best Andrew Garfield performance in a movie since he should’ve won an Oscar for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s directorial debut, Tick, Tick… Boom. Playing Sam Altman in Guadagnino’s ripped-from-the-headlines look at OpenAI’s rise, and how it has set humanity on a collision course with its own ruin, Garfield lords over the movie like a millennial cringe Bond villain without the shark tank. (Sample line reading: “Sooo, that just happened.”)
I’ve already seen people compare Garfield’s performance in Artificial to Anthony Hopkins’ Oscar-winning work as Hannibal Lecter — and the fact that Guadagnino and his cinematographer, Malik Hassan Sayeed (He Got Game, After the Hunt), often replicate Jonathan Demme’s signature close-up shots, with Garfield and other actors looking directly into the camera lens, certainly lends credence to the juxtaposition.
→ Read more about how Artificial played at NYFF at TheAnkler.com
Best Actress Showdown: Julianne Moore vs. the Newcomers
- Katey Rich
If the best actor race is about multiple A-list men with long histories of success vying for awards recognition, consider the best actress contest its opposite: one major frontrunner in Julianne Moore followed by a ton of newcomers and breakouts, a handful of respected veterans and, by my count, just two no-argument, above-the-title movie stars (Zendaya and Emily Blunt). That’s fun! Assuming Moore is nominated for her barn-burner performance in The Debut, it seems very likely that the other four actresses joining her in the category will all be first-time nominees — including several names that were all but unknown a year ago.
Historically, actresses are far more likely than actors to win Oscars as newcomers, from Judy Holliday in 1950’s Born Yesterday to Mikey Madison for Anora just two years ago. But Oscar season has many different kinds of discoveries, and this year’s hopefuls can follow many different narratives on their way to trying to beat Julianne Moore. (Not that it’ll be easy, as I’ll discuss on tomorrow’s podcast with Christopher Rosen and Rotten Tomatoes awards editor Jacqueline Coley.)
As you can see on the Best Actress predictions page, there’s little consensus beyond Moore, which means those remaining four slots could be anyone’s game. For the sake of talking about breakthroughs of one kind or another, I’ll set aside the previous nominees who are in the mix — Helen Mirren for A Talent for Murder, Blunt for Disclosure Day, Sandra Hüller for Rose and/or Fatherland, Sophie Okonedo for Clarissa, Renate Reinsve for Fjord — and focus on the first-timers. If they’re getting their first Oscar nominations this year, how will they go about it?