Well, this is weird. During a panic over that bug that bricks your iPhone if you set it to 1970, we accidentally set our computer's clock to 2070—and pulled an inadvertent Marty McFly. There, in WordPress version 29.3, was our recap of the Academy Awards ceremony of 2026. (We don’t know what happened to the other 53 Oscars ceremonies, either. Just feel lucky that we found one.)
As it turns out, 10 years from now things are a lot different. There's a category for virtual reality! Ava DuVernay directed the Best Picture winner! The accounting is now handled by Robo-Leonard Nimoy! There's also a much more diverse slate of nominees. We can't believe we're saying this, but in the future, the Oscars are kinda fantastic. Below are the highlights of the 2026 Oscars, and what we thought—will think?—of each of them.
Best Supporting Actor: Abraham Attah, First Lady
The biopic about Michelle Obama had been racking up SAG Awards and Golden Globes, so it’s no surprise that Abraham Attah would snag the first award of the night for playing Obama’s brother Craig during their younger years. It’s an award he’s been working towards since Beasts of No Nation a decade ago, so it’s good to finally see him rack up a win.
Best Costume Design: Kym Barrett, A Different World
Ava DuVernay’s plan to poach the Wachowskis' longtime wardrobe collaborator paid off big time. As over-the-top as Barrett's designs were in Jupiter Ascending, they were elegantly subdued and perfectly suited to New Jerusalem, the Orion Nebula-based colony DuVernay dreamed up for Different World. Snaps all around.
Best Documentary Short Subject: What Ever Happened to Slimer?, dir. Bill Murray
Did anyone ever think Bill Murray would make a documentary? Let alone one about a character from one of his movies from 40 years ago? Nope, us either.
Best VR Short: There Is No Train, dir. Chris Milk
After advocating for VR categories for nearly a decade, Chris Milk got his wish—and then won the inaugural year. It's just shorts for now, but with Rian Johnson and Lexi Alexander both making full-length mixed-reality movies, a Best VR Feature category can't be far behind.
Best Supporting Actress: Shailene Woodley, A Different World
No surprise here. Like Kristen Stewart, who won last year for playing riot grrrl Kathleen Hannah in Bikinis Kill, Woodley has been doing amazing work to shake off her YA movie past.
Best Visual Effects: Star Wars: Episode XII—Maz’s Rebellion, Lucasfilm
For the eleventh year in a row, the VFX Award went to a Star Wars movie. You know who's over it? James Cameron. Not even 12 hours after the ceremony, the Vine of his reaction after hearing that Avatar 2 got skunked is at 2 billion loops and counting.
Best Animated Feature: Life in the Clouds, dir. Sanjay Patel
It took a long time, but it was worth it. Ten years after Sanjay’s Super Team, Pixar director Sanjay Patel finally made his first feature and it was stunning.
Best Cinematography: Roger Deakins, East of Eden
Director Jennifer Lawrence was wise to pick a steady hand like Roger Deakins for her debut, and his vision of the Salinas Valley in the long-awaited remake was impeccable. This was maybe the closest race of the ceremony this year—Ava DuVernay could’ve easily walked away with this for being her own cinematographer on A Different World.
Best Documentary Feature: Uber: Taken for a Ride, dir Alex Gibney
Gibney continues his run of chronicling the successes and failures of the 21st century’s biggest tech companies and collecting trophies for it. After his recent exposés of Alibaba and Tinder, this makes a threepeat—and four Oscars in the past six years.
Best Original Song: “Her Grace” from First Lady, Kendrick Lamar
There was never going to be anyone but K.dot to write the theme song for this movie, and even his live performance during the ceremony—with Blue Ivy Carter and North West leading a children's choir for the hook—tore the house down.
Best Original Score: Lagoon, Junkie XL
Junkie XL took a couple of years off there for a while to go back to making his own music, but he came back strong for Lagoon. And with next year's *The Furiosa Chronicles *in pre-production, he'll be gunning for a back-to-back.
Best Stuntwork: Ashima Shiraishi, Saga
When the adaptation of Bryan K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples' long-running comic book finally entered production, no one could have predicted that the movie's breakout star would be a onetime rock-climbing phenom. Stepping in as Quvenzhané Wallis' body double for some breathtaking zero-G action sequences, Shiraishi went from meme-hero to space queen with nary a hiccup.
Best Original Screenplay: A Different World, Ava DuVernay
It came out during the awards season press tour that DuVernay had been working on this screenplay since she saw John Boyega in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, writing the role she hoped the actor age into. The time-traveler she created for him is a little Rick Deckard, a little Bruce Wayne, and totally perfect. So was the world she made for him to play in. This is a big win for original sci-fi.
Best Adapted Screenplay: Lagoon, Nicole Perlman
A lot of people didn’t know what Nicole Perlman was going to do after she wrapped her final Marvel adaptation, Captain Marvel 3. Thankfully she did: adapting Nnedi Okorafor’s first-contact book Lagoon.
Best Director: Jennifer Lawrence, East of Eden
The Auteur Formerly Known as J-Law was attached to star in an adaptation of East of Eden more than a decade back, but it never came to pass, and even back then she probably would’ve laughed in your face if you’d told her this would be her Oscar-winning directorial debut. We'll never know if she knew Amy Schumer would streak her acceptance speech, but we also can't say it matters.
Best Actor: Alicia Vikander, Lancelot
Ever since her Oscar campaign started last fall people were wondering if Vikander would make history with this, and sure enough she did. She fought hard to be nominated in the Best Actor category since, as she noted, she was playing a man in this modern retelling of the Lancelot story. She got her wish—and now she’s got her Oscar, too.
Best Actress: Lupita Nyong’o, First Lady
Anyone would’ve been intimidated to step into Michelle Obama’s shoes, but if she was frightened Lupita Nyong’o didn’t show it all. Such a strong performance. (We’ll see if it bodes will for Michelle’s run for Senate.)
Best Picture: A Different World, producer Jessica Chastain
Ava DuVernay’s A Different World, about a young man (Boyega) who travels forward in time to help colonize a new planet, was pretty much all sci-fi fans could talk about this year, so this win was no surprise. Neither was the win for Woodley for her role as Boyega’s fellow scientist/love interest. This is also massive for Chastain, who launched her own production company a few years back to make movies just like this one.
