March 15, 2026 is already one of those nights that film lovers will talk about for years. The 98th Academy Awards, held at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, handed out trophies across 24 categories and delivered some genuinely historic firsts alongside a few genuine surprises. Conan O’Brien returned as host for the second year running, and the night belonged largely to two Warner Bros. films that had been fighting each other all awards season long: Paul Thomas Anderson’s action thriller One Battle After Another and Ryan Coogler’s vampire epic Sinners.
Here is everything that happened, explained in full.
Who Won Best Actress at the 2026 Oscars?
The answer is Jessie Buckley, and if you have been following awards season at all, it was the least surprising win of the night, though no less deserving for it.
Buckley took home the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her performance as Agnes Shakespeare in Hamnet, the Chloé Zhao-directed historical drama based on Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 bestselling novel. She became the first Irish woman ever to win the Best Actress Oscar, and she accepted the award on what she noted was Mother’s Day in the United Kingdom, dedicating it to what she called “the beautiful chaos of a mother’s heart.”
The film itself tells the story of William Shakespeare’s marriage to Agnes Hathaway and the devastating loss of their 11-year-old son, Hamnet, to plague in 16th-century England. Shakespeare is played by Paul Mescal, but make no mistake: the film belongs entirely to Buckley. Agnes, portrayed historically as the woman who supposedly held Shakespeare back, becomes in this telling a gifted healer, a falconer, a woman deeply connected to nature and almost mystical in her instincts. The character is described in O’Farrell’s text as Agnes rather than Anne to distinguish her from the actress Anne Hathaway, and the name suits Buckley’s portrayal of someone as elemental as the forests she walks through.
Buckley swept essentially every major award this season. She won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama, the BAFTA, the Critics’ Choice Award, and the SAG Award before adding the Oscar to the collection. Critics have exhausted their superlatives on this performance. Rolling Stone’s David Fear wrote that audiences would be discussing it for years. IndieWire’s David Ehrlich described Agnes as “anchored by the primordial rawness of Buckley’s astonishing performance,” noting that the character is not built on tropes but on something far more difficult and alive.
Born in Killarney, Ireland, and trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Buckley has built a career out of never taking the easy route. From her early television work in Chernobyl and War and Peace to her Oscar-nominated turn in The Lost Daughter, she has always chosen complex, emotionally demanding roles. The fact that she was also filming The Bride with Christian Bale just two weeks before beginning work on Hamnet gives some sense of the sheer pace and intensity she brings to everything she does.
Hamnet received eight nominations at this ceremony and won one: Best Actress. The film holds an 87% score on Rotten Tomatoes and earned the Best Motion Picture Drama and Best Actress awards at the Golden Globes earlier this season.
What is One Battle After Another About, and Who Is in It?
One Battle After Another is Paul Thomas Anderson’s tenth feature film, and critics are calling it his most entertaining yet. It won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Casting, and Best Supporting Actor, totalling six Oscars on the night, the most of any film.
The story follows Pat Calhoun, a washed-up, paranoid ex-revolutionary played by Leonardo DiCaprio, who has been living off the grid with his spirited teenage daughter Willa, played by Chase Infiniti in her film debut. When his old nemesis, the psychotic and deeply corrupt military officer Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw, resurfaces after 16 years, everything Calhoun has been hiding from comes back at once. Teyana Taylor plays Perfidia Beverly Hills, a female revolutionary whose time on screen is limited but whose presence commands every scene she appears in. Benicio Del Toro plays Sensei Sergio St. Carlos, the charismatic leader of an underground railroad helping migrants to safety.
Anderson loosely based the film on Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland, an adaptation he had been thinking about since the early 2000s. He eventually combined those ideas with two other concepts he had been developing: an action-car-chase movie set in the desert and a story about a female revolutionary. One Battle After Another is the result, and it runs for nearly three hours without ever feeling slow.
Shot in VistaVision on film, one of the first productions to use that format since the 1960s, the movie has a raw, high-resolution clarity that gives it the feel of something genuinely cinematic in a way that most modern productions do not manage. The Rotten Tomatoes consensus calls it “an epic screwball adventure teeming with awe-inspiring action set pieces” and “one of his most thematically rich” films.
The cast and the studio behind the film made for an unusual combination of prestige and scale. Warner Bros. released it with a final budget of around $175 million, justified largely by DiCaprio’s involvement. His character Bob is, at various points in the film, described as resembling “The Big Lebowski” and “a three-hour-long panic attack,” which gives you a reasonable sense of the tone.
Who Won Best Actor at the 2026 Oscars?
Michael B. Jordan won Best Actor for playing the dual roles of twins Smoke and Stack in Ryan Coogler’s Sinners. It was his first Academy Award nomination and his first win. In his acceptance speech he thanked the Black actors who came before him.
Jordan’s win was considered the more contentious of the two lead acting prizes heading into the night. Timothée Chalamet was nominated for Marty Supreme and had been considered a serious frontrunner for much of the season. But Jordan’s momentum built steadily through February, and by the time he picked up the SAG Award two weeks before the ceremony, the momentum had shifted decisively.
Sinners received 16 nominations at this year’s ceremony, the most in Oscar history, surpassing the previous record of 14 held jointly by All About Eve, Titanic, and La La Land. The film won four Oscars in total: Best Actor for Jordan, Best Original Screenplay for Ryan Coogler, Best Original Score for Ludwig Göransson (his third career Oscar), and Best Cinematography for Autumn Durald Arkapaw, who made history as the first woman ever to win that particular award.
Does Timothée Chalamet have an Oscar? As of this ceremony, no. He was nominated for Best Actor for Marty Supreme but did not win.
Did Leonardo DiCaprio Win an Oscar This Year?
No. DiCaprio was nominated for Best Actor for his work in One Battle After Another but the award went to Michael B. Jordan. DiCaprio has won one Oscar in his career, for Best Actor for The Revenant at the 88th Academy Awards in 2016.
How Many Oscars Did Sinners Win?
Sinners won four Oscars at the 98th Academy Awards: Best Actor (Michael B. Jordan), Best Original Screenplay (Ryan Coogler), Best Original Score (Ludwig Göransson), and Best Cinematography (Autumn Durald Arkapaw). Despite receiving 16 nominations, more than any film in Oscar history, it ultimately came second to One Battle After Another in the overall count.
Who Won Best Supporting Actress: Amy Madigan in Weapons
Amy Madigan won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Weapons, and it was the very first award handed out on the night. The ceremony opened with host Conan O’Brien being forced onstage dressed as Madigan’s character from the film, complete with red wig and white makeup, which is one way to set a tone.
Madigan’s win was well-received. Weapons had been one of the more unsettling films in the awards conversation this season, and her performance reportedly anchors the film’s more disturbing sequences.
Sean Penn Wins His Third Oscar and Skips the Ceremony
Sean Penn won Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw in One Battle After Another, a performance multiple critics named one of the best villain turns of 2025. The character is described as a vivid avatar for contemporary American authoritarianism.
Penn was not at the Dolby Theatre to collect the award. He was in Ukraine. The morning after the ceremony, he met with President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv. Ukrainian Railways posted footage of Penn arriving by train in the capital, cigarette in mouth. The caption read, in part: “Sean Penn chose Ukraine instead of Oscar.”
The win gave Penn his third Academy Award, tying the all-time record for male acting wins. He joins Jack Nicholson, Walter Brennan, and Daniel Day-Lewis as the only men to win three acting Oscars. His previous wins were Best Actor for Mystic River in 2004 and Best Actor for Milk in 2009. This is his first win in a supporting category.
Kieran Culkin, who won the same award last year, accepted on Penn’s behalf and quipped: “Sean Penn couldn’t be here this evening, or didn’t want to, so I’ll be accepting the award on his behalf.”
Paul Thomas Anderson Finally Wins His First Oscar
One Battle After Another is Anderson’s tenth film, and he had been nominated approximately a dozen times across his career before Sunday night. He won three Oscars at this ceremony: Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Picture as a producer alongside Sara Murphy and Adam Somner. In accepting one of those awards, he told the room: “You make a guy work hard for one of these. I really appreciate it.”
Cassandra Kulukundis and the First-Ever Oscar for Casting
One Battle After Another also won the inaugural Oscar for Best Achievement in Casting, awarded to casting director Cassandra Kulukundis. This was the first new competitive Oscar category introduced since Best Animated Feature in 2001, and the Academy had reportedly rejected a similar proposal back in 1999. Kulukundis’s work in assembling the ensemble for Anderson’s film made her the natural first recipient.
Mr. Nobody Against Putin Wins Best Documentary Feature
The documentary Mr. Nobody Against Putin won Best Documentary Feature. The film follows an individual’s resistance against the Russian government and was accepted by a team including director Radovan Sibrt and producers Alzbeta Karaskova, David Borenstein, Pavel Talankin, and Helle Faber.
The Girl Who Cried Pearls Wins Best Animated Short
The Girl Who Cried Pearls won Best Animated Short Film. The film debuted at the Annecy International Film Festival last year with an English-language narration by Colm Feore. It was one of several short film categories to deliver unexpected outcomes.
In the Live Action Short category, there was only the seventh tie in Oscars history. Both The Singers (Netflix) and Two People Exchanging Saliva (Canal+/The New Yorker) were declared co-winners.
The Full List of 2026 Oscar Winners
Best Picture: One Battle After Another
Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another
Best Actor in a Leading Role: Michael B. Jordan, Sinners
Best Actress in a Leading Role: Jessie Buckley, Hamnet
Best Supporting Actor: Sean Penn, One Battle After Another
Best Supporting Actress: Amy Madigan, Weapons
Best Original Screenplay: Ryan Coogler, Sinners
Best Adapted Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another
Best Animated Feature Film: KPop Demon Hunters
Best International Feature Film: Sentimental Value (Norway)
Best Documentary Feature Film: Mr. Nobody Against Putin
Best Original Score: Ludwig Göransson, Sinners
Best Original Song: “Golden,” KPop Demon Hunters
Best Cinematography: Autumn Durald Arkapaw, Sinners
Best Film Editing: Andy Jurgensen, One Battle After Another
Best Costume Design: Frankenstein
Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Frankenstein
Best Production Design: Frankenstein
Best Sound: F1
Best Visual Effects: Avatar: Fire and Ash
Best Casting (inaugural): Cassandra Kulukundis, One Battle After Another
Best Animated Short Film: The Girl Who Cried Pearls
Best Live Action Short Film: The Singers (tie) and Two People Exchanging Saliva (tie)
Best Documentary Short Film: All the Empty Rooms
The Bigger Picture: Warner Bros. Had a Historic Night
One Battle After Another and Sinners are both Warner Bros. releases. Between the two of them, the studio collected 11 Oscars on Sunday night, a record haul. Netflix was the next highest-performing distributor with seven wins, three of them for Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein.
KPop Demon Hunters won two awards including Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song for “Golden,” making it the first K-pop song ever to win an Oscar. Diane Warren, who has been nominated 17 times over nearly four decades without ever winning, lost again, making her the record-holder for Oscar nomination futility. She took it with good humor, writing on social media: “Well at least I’m consistent!”
Norway’s Sentimental Value, directed by Joachim Trier, won Best International Feature Film. Ludwig Göransson paid tribute to his father during his Best Score acceptance speech.
The In Memoriam segment was notably structured differently this year, given several high-profile losses including Rob Reiner, Robert Redford, Diane Keaton, and Catherine O’Hara. Billy Crystal opened the segment with a personal tribute to Reiner, his longtime friend and collaborator, calling their connection “immeasurable” and closing with a reference to The Princess Bride: “Buddy, what fun we had storming the castle.”
What This Year’s Oscars Actually Told Us About Cinema in 2025
The 98th Academy Awards rewarded original, ambitious filmmaking above almost everything else. One Battle After Another is an expensive, sprawling political thriller from one of America’s most idiosyncratic directors. Sinners is a genre-defying vampire story rooted in Black American history and mythology. Hamnet is a quiet, devastating historical drama that centers a woman who has been written out of the Shakespeare story for four centuries.
None of these are safe bets. None of them are sequels or reboots or franchise entries. The fact that they dominated the night suggests something worth paying attention to: audiences and Academy members are still hungry for films that take genuine creative risks.
Autumn Durald Arkapaw’s historic win for Best Cinematography is particularly worth noting. The first woman to win in that category, her work on Sinners was widely praised for capturing both the period texture of the Deep South setting and the supernatural elements of Coogler’s story.
Jessie Buckley is 36 years old, a RADA-trained Irish actress who has been quietly building one of the most impressive bodies of work of anyone in her generation. Her Oscar is not a surprise. But it is thoroughly earned.
All information in this article is accurate as of the 98th Academy Awards ceremony held on March 15, 2026.
