There are Oscar nights, and then there are Oscar nights; those rare ceremonies where the air feels different, where you sense that something greater than an awards season is being concluded. Sunday, March 15, 2026 was unmistakably the latter. Hosted by Conan O’Brien at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, the 98th Academy Awards unfolded with greatness, delivering victory to filmmakers who had waited years, even decades, for that golden moment.
The biggest story walking out of the night? Paul Thomas Anderson. After 14 nominations stretching back to 1998 — a career of near misses that had become something of an industry-wide running wound; Anderson finally broke through. His sprawling, ferocious adaptation One Battle After Another did not just win. It swept. Six Academy Awards in a single evening, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor, Best Editing, and a piece of history in the first-ever Oscar for Best Casting. For the legions of PTA devotees who had watched Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood, The Master, and Phantom Thread fall short at the podium, this was the culmination of a decades-long vigil.
The Six-Oscar Sweep
To understand the scale of what One Battle After Another achieved, consider the competition it was up against. Films like Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme, Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet, and Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein were all formidable, all beloved by critics, all genuine contenders in their own right. And yet Anderson’s film absorbed the evening.
Sean Penn, delivering what many called the finest supporting performance of his career in One Battle After Another, claimed Best Supporting Actor. Andy Jurgensen took home Best Editing. Cassandra Kulukundis won the inaugural Best Casting award — a category introduced for the first time in Oscar history. It was a win that felt both overdue and precisely right, given how brilliantly assembled the film’s ensemble was. Every award felt earned, not gifted.
Ryan Coogler Makes His Mark
If Anderson owned the night’s dominant narrative, Ryan Coogler wrote its most emotionally resonant chapter. Sinners, his bold, blues-soaked vampire period drama set in 1930s Mississippi, became the cultural film of the year the moment it was released, and the Academy rewarded it accordingly with four wins.
Michael B. Jordan claimed Best Actor for his electrifying dual performance as the Smokestack twins, bringing one of the most physically and emotionally demanding roles of recent memory to a deserving conclusion. Ludwig Göransson claimed his third Oscar for Best Original Score, joining his wins for Black Panther (2018) and Oppenheimer (2023) in what is becoming one of the most decorated composing careers in modern Hollywood. And Ryan Coogler himself won Best Original Screenplay — his first Oscar win as a writer, a long time coming for a filmmaker of his calibre.
But perhaps the single most powerful moment of the night, the one that will be remembered when conversations about this ceremony resurface years from now, came when Autumn Durald Arkapaw was announced as the winner of Best Cinematography for Sinners. She became the first female cinematographer in Oscar history to win the award. A barrier that had stood for 98 years finally fell, and it fell beautifully.
Frankenstein, Hamnet, and the Rest of the Field
Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein arrived at the Oscars as one of the most visually ravishing films of 2025, and the Academy duly recognised it with three awards: Best Production Design, Best Costume Design for Kate Hawley, and Best Makeup and Hairstyling. Del Toro’s gothic sensibility found its perfect ceremonial expression in these craft categories, and deservedly so.
Jessie Buckley claimed Best Actress for her performance in Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet, a role that had been talked about since the film’s premiere, raw, elemental, and utterly unforgettable. Meanwhile, Amy Madigan’s win for Best Supporting Actress for Weapons was one of the evening’s genuine surprises, a performance that had quietly built momentum throughout the season.
Norway’s Sentimental Value, directed by Joachim Trier, claimed Best International Feature Film, continuing a remarkable run for Scandinavian cinema at the Academy Awards. The film also received nominations in multiple major categories, including Best Picture, Best Actress for Renate Reinsve, and Best Original Screenplay, signalling that its impact extended well beyond the international category alone.
Historic Wins and Joyful Surprises
KPop Demon Hunters, Netflix’s wildly inventive animated feature, claimed Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song for “Golden” — a double win that felt like a genuine celebration of the breadth of contemporary storytelling. Mr. Nobody Against Putin took Best Documentary Feature in what was one of the ceremony’s more quietly powerful moments. Avatar: Fire and Ash claimed Best Visual Effects, while F1: The Movie roared to victory in the Sound category.
The Best Live-Action Short resulted in a rare and charming tie, shared between The Singers and Two People Exchanging Saliva, while The Girl Who Cried Pearls won Best Animated Short and All the Empty Rooms claimed Best Documentary Short.
The Complete 2026 Oscar Winners List
| Category | Winner |
|---|---|
| Best Picture | One Battle After Another |
| Best Director | Paul Thomas Anderson — One Battle After Another |
| Best Actor | Michael B. Jordan — Sinners |
| Best Actress | Jessie Buckley — Hamnet |
| Best Supporting Actor | Sean Penn — One Battle After Another |
| Best Supporting Actress | Amy Madigan — Weapons |
| Best Adapted Screenplay | Paul Thomas Anderson — One Battle After Another |
| Best Original Screenplay | Ryan Coogler — Sinners |
| Best Animated Feature | KPop Demon Hunters |
| Best Documentary Feature | Mr. Nobody Against Putin |
| Best International Feature | Sentimental Value (Norway) |
| Best Editing | Andy Jurgensen — One Battle After Another |
| Best Cinematography | Autumn Durald Arkapaw — Sinners |
| Best Original Score | Ludwig Göransson — Sinners |
| Best Casting (inaugural) | Cassandra Kulukundis — One Battle After Another |
| Best Production Design | Frankenstein |
| Best Costume Design | Kate Hawley — Frankenstein |
| Best Visual Effects | Avatar: Fire and Ash |
| Best Sound | F1: The Movie |
| Best Makeup and Hairstyling | Frankenstein |
| Best Original Song | “Golden” — KPop Demon Hunters |
| Best Live-Action Short | The Singers & Two People Exchanging Saliva (Tie) |
| Best Documentary Short | All the Empty Rooms |
| Best Animated Short | The Girl Who Cried Pearls |
A Night That Will Be Remembered
What made the 98th Academy Awards genuinely special was not just the individual triumphs, as extraordinary as they were, but the cumulative sense that cinema had done something meaningful in 2025. The films honoured on this night were not safe choices. They were ambitious, formally adventurous works: a PTA epic, a Black vampire film rooted in American history, a Frankenstein from the director of Pan’s Labyrinth, a Norwegian family drama of immense emotional depth. The Academy, for once, appeared to be recognising exactly the right things.
Paul Thomas Anderson will never go without an Oscar again. Autumn Durald Arkapaw’s name is now etched into the history books. Ryan Coogler’s Sinners has been fully ratified as the cultural milestone it always was. And somewhere in all of it, cinema itself felt celebrated rather than simply awarded.
The 98th Academy Awards were hosted by Conan O’Brien. But the stage belonged, above all, to the films. As it always should.