How to Watch the Oscars 2026

The 98th Academy Awards, Oscar 2026. Ahead of this year’s Oscars, which celebrate 2025 in film, we’re here to tell you how you watch the Oscars 2026, as well as the nominees, host, presenters, and performers, and what to expect from the 2026 ceremony.

Going into the show, Sinners leads with a record-breaking 16 nominations, breaking the previous 14-nomination tie between All About Eve, Titanic, and La La Land. One Battle After Another ranks second with 13 nominations.

The ceremony will have increased security because the FBI warned local police in California on Wednesday of the possibility of a retaliatory drone strike from Iran “against unspecified targets in California,” though “no additional information on the timing, method, target, or perpetrators of this alleged attack” surfaced, according to the alert.

Read on to learn everything else you need to know about the Oscars 2026.

When are the Oscars?

The Oscars 2026 will air from the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on March 15, 2026, at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT/11 p.m. GMT. The program is scheduled to last three hours, but it is almost certain to go longer.

How to watch the Oscars 2026?

The Oscars will air on your local ABC channel. It will also be live streamed on Hulu. (We are still a few years away from the Oscars on YouTube.) If you want to see the pre-show arrivals and red carpet interviews, ABC’s coverage starts at 3:30pm ET/12:30pm PT, while E!’s begins at 4pm ET/1pm PT.

Who is Hosting the Oscars?

Conan O’Brien, who previously appeared in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You alongside Best Actress candidate Rose Byrne, will host the Oscars for the second year in a row.

O’Brien was named the 2026 host two weeks after the 2025 Oscars, saying in a statement, “The only reason I’m hosting the Oscars next year is that I want to hear Adrien Brody finish his speech.” To refresh your recollection, Brody spent over six minutes accepting the Best Actor Oscar for his performance in The Brutalist.

What’s new at the Oscars this year?

For the first time since 2001’s Best Animated Feature Film, the Academy Awards will introduce a new category: Achievement in Casting, which will debut in 2024. The award will be given to a casting director, but the criteria for winning appear to be more involved than simply compiling a list of talented actors. The first ever nominees are:

• Nina Gold, Hamnet
• Jennifer Venditti, Marty Supreme
• Cassandra Kulukundis, One Battle after Another
• Gabriel Domingues, The Secret Agent
• Francine Maisler, Sinners

Unlike the other awards, which will feature video, the casting directors will have a “Fab Five”-style presenting panel, with someone who has a personal connection to the nominee speaking about the job itself.

“We thought we really needed to tell a story,” showrunner Raj Kapoor stated during a press briefing on Wednesday. We need to educate people about the significance of casting directors’ contributions to film.”

The next new category will be introduced at the 2028 Oscars, when the Academy will finally recognise stunts as the bone-breaking art form that they are.

Who is presenting at the Oscars 2026?

The official voice of 2026 will be none other than Matt Berry (What We Do in the Shadows), who was reportedly pitched by Team Coco. “My team and I are massive Matt Berry fans, and have been for quite a while,” O’Brien remarked during a news conference Wednesday morning.

“I think he’s one of the funniest people alive, and I’m a regular viewer of his online lunacy, social media madness, and the various shows on which he’s worked, and I just think he’s a joy. So we had an idea: could we have Matt participate?

During the same press conference, the producers revealed a Bridesmaids reunion with Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, and this year’s nominee Rose Byrne, as well as a Marvel reunion.

“We’re going to have superstar superheroes, but there will also be an extraterrestrial on stage,” executive producer Katy Mullan stated. “So you can figure that one out.” Nicole Kidman, Jimmy Kimmel, Delroy Lindo (a Supporting Actor nomination), Ewan McGregor, Wagner Moura (a Best Actor nominee), Pedro Pascal, Bill Pullman, Lewis Pullman, Channing Tatum, and Sigourney Weaver were all announced on Wednesday.

Previously announced presenters include Will Arnett, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Robert Downey Jr., Anne Hathaway, Paul Mescal, Gwyneth Paltrow, Chris Evans, and Kumail Nanjiani. The presenters include last year’s winners Adrien Brody, Kieran Culkin, Mikey Madison, and Zoe Saldaña, as well as 2025 candidate Demi Moore.

Javier Bardem and Chase Infiniti, who appeared in F1 and One Battle After Another but did not win solo nominations, will also be present. (Infiniti’s absence from the Supporting Actress competition is seen as one of this year’s major snubs.)

Who is performing at the Oscars?

The presentation will feature two significant “moments” that the show’s producers describe as “more than just performances — they expand into cinematic tributes that celebrate the relationship between music and storytelling and why these films resonated so deeply with audiences around the world.”

This year’s Best Original Song nominees include “Golden” from KPop Demon Hunters and “I Lied to You” from Sinners. (The three nominated tracks, “Train Dreams” from Best Picture candidate Train Dreams, “Dear Me” from the documentary Diane Warren: Restless, and “Sweet Dreams of Joy” from the documentary Viva Verdi!, will not be performed live.

Huntr/x’s singing voices—Ejae, Audrey Nuna, and Rei Ami—will perform “Golden,” backed by “a fusion of traditional Korean instrumentalists and dance, celebrating the folklore and cultural inspiration that anchors the story behind this animated blockbuster.”

Miles Caton, the breakthrough star of Sinners, and singer-songwriter Raphael Saadiq will perform “I Lied To You,” which is touted as an exploration of the “role music plays in the film’s storytelling for a cinematic live moment.” (Hopefully, this means it tries to recreate the electric, magnificent fever dream from the film sequence from which the song is based.)

Blues musicians Buddy Guy and Bobby Rush, rapper Shaboozey, ballet dancer Misty Copeland, and actors Li Jun Li and Jayme Lawson will participate, as will artists Brittany Howard of the Alabama Shakes, Eric Gales, Alice Smith, and Christone “Kingfish” Ingram.

Josh Groban and the Los Angeles Master Chorale will also perform.

What are this year’s Oscars nominees?

Read on for the nominees in some of the top categories, but you can check out the full list of nominees here.

Which nominees are expected to win?

Though the ballot contains many of the same films being honoured in several categories, a clear winner has not emerged in many of the main races, with a few exceptions.

KPop Demon Hunters easily wins Best Animated Feature Film. Despite the well-deserved buzz surrounding Rose Byrne’s performance in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Jessie Buckley’s portrayal of Shakespeare’s mourning wife Agnes in Hamnet is likely to win Best Actress.

Ryan Coogler and Paul Thomas Anderson will get the Best Original and Best Adapted screenplay Oscars, respectively. Aside from that, other categories are a coin flip, usually between One Battle After Another and Sinners.

Though Timothée Chalamet was the presumptive winner for Best Actor as a ping pong hustler in Marty Supreme a few months ago, winning early at the Golden Globes, that position has cooled; the SAG Award went to Michael B. Jordan for his twin brothers, Stack and Smoke, in Sinners.

Amy Madigan won the Supporting Actress award for her role as Aunt Gladys in Weapons, which some have interpreted as a sign of an approaching Oscar victory over Teyana Taylor’s revolutionary Perfidia Beverly Hills in One Battle After Another.