98th Academy Awards set for March 15 with Conan O'Brien hosting and Sinners leading nominations

The 98th Academy Awards will be held on March 15, 2026, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, airing live on ABC and Hulu. Conan O'Brien returns as host for a second consecutive year, a decision the Academy made after his 2025 hosting performance drew broadly positive reviews and solid ratings. The ceremony also introduces Best Casting as a new competitive category, the first new Oscar category added in several years.

Ryan Coogler's film Sinners leads all nominees with 16 nominations, a number that surpasses the previous record of 14 nominations shared by Titanic, All About Eve, and La La Land. That is a significant gap. Getting 16 nominations means a film touched nearly every branch of the Academy's membership, from directing and acting to technical categories like cinematography, editing, and sound. Sinners will need to convert a substantial portion of those nominations into wins to avoid becoming remembered primarily as a film that was nominated more than any other but won comparatively little.

Sinners and the record-breaking nomination count

Ryan Coogler directed Sinners, which stars Michael B. Jordan in what has been described as a period supernatural thriller set in the American South during the 1930s. The film performed strongly at the box office, earning over $350 million globally during its theatrical run, which is notable because films that succeed both commercially and critically do not always translate that dual success into Oscar dominance. Sinners appears to be an exception, accumulating nominations across Best Picture, Best Director, multiple acting categories, and nearly every major craft category the Academy recognizes.

The 14-nomination ceiling set by Titanic in 1998 and matched by All About Eve in 1951 and La La Land in 2017 held for decades. Coogler's film breaking that record by two nominations is a concrete measure of how broadly the Academy's various branches responded to Sinners. Whether that breadth translates into wins depends partly on whether voters concentrate their preferences on one film or spread awards across the field.

Other major nominees: One Battle After Another, Hamnet, Marty Supreme, and Frankenstein

One Battle After Another, Paul Thomas Anderson's adaptation of the Don DeLillo novel, received nominations in multiple major categories including Best Picture and Best Director. Anderson has been nominated for Best Director five times previously and has never won, which makes this year's campaign particularly watched. The film is Anderson's most ambitious production in terms of scale, and his collaborators from Phantom Thread and Licorice Pizza are involved in the project again.

Hamnet, based on Maggie O'Farrell's novel about the family of William Shakespeare centered on the death of his son, received strong acting nominations and a Best Picture nod. Marty Supreme, a film about the world of competitive table tennis directed by Josh Safdie, earned attention in the acting and screenplay categories. Frankenstein, directed by Guillermo del Toro, received nominations primarily in production design, costume design, and visual effects categories, which aligns with del Toro's strengths and the film's visual ambition.

Conan O'Brien's return as host

O'Brien's 2025 Oscars hosting drew an audience of approximately 19.5 million viewers on ABC, up from 18.8 million in 2024 when there was no host. The Academy brought him back directly, without the usual months-long deliberation over potential host candidates that has characterized recent years. His comedic style leans on self-deprecation and absurdist tangents rather than the celebrity roast format that has caused controversies at prior ceremonies, which appears to be a deliberate choice by the Academy to keep the show's tone safer in a polarized media environment.

The show's runtime has been a consistent complaint. The 2024 ceremony, which had no host, ran approximately 3 hours and 22 minutes. O'Brien's 2025 hosting kept the show to around 3 hours and 8 minutes, which the Academy treated as an improvement. The 2026 ceremony will be watched partly to see whether adding the new Best Casting category extends the runtime or whether the production team trims elsewhere to compensate.

Best Casting: the Academy's new category explained

Best Casting has been discussed within the industry for many years. Casting directors have been represented by a branch of the Academy since 2013 but had no competitive category in which their work could win an Oscar. The category was formally approved by the Academy's Board of Governors in 2023, with its first eligible ceremony being the 98th. The nominees in Best Casting reflect films where casting is widely considered a major component of the film's success, which this year includes Sinners, Hamnet, and several other nominees.

Casting directors have long argued that their work is among the most consequential decisions made in film production, since a film's entire acting performance depends on whether the right actors were selected in the first place. The Oscar for Best Casting will be awarded by a vote of the entire Academy membership, not just the Casting Directors branch, following the same voting structure used for Best Picture. The first winner of this category will be announced live at the Dolby Theatre on March 15.