Oscars 2026: How the 98th Academy Awards Became a Record-Breaking Audit

It appears that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has finally embraced its destiny as a high-stakes auditing firm, because as we drift toward the ceremony on March 15, 2026, the 98th Academy Awards nominations arrived as a relentless assault on the record books. – we are no longer measuring cinematic achievement in terms of emotional impact or cultural resonance, we are measuring it in the sheer volume of paperwork required to catalog the nominations.

While the headlines have been dominated by Ryan Coogler’s Sinners and its history-making 16 nominations, the rest of the field is engaged in its own frantic race to break records that nobody knew existed until a few weeks ago.

The Duel of the Decades

For the first time in the 97-year history of the Oscars, two films have received 13 or more nominations in the same year, and while Sinners is the statistical behemoth, Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another has secured 13 nominations of its own, marking the third consecutive year that at least one film has hit that specific baker’s dozen.

We are now living in an era of “Nomination Inflation,” where a film is seemingly considered a failure if it doesn’t require a dedicated intern just to carry its press kit.

Paul Thomas Anderson, a man who has spent the last two decades as the Academy’s most prestigious bridesmaid, has now reached 14 career nominations without a single win, and if he loses his three bids this year, he will tie the record for the most-nominated individual to never hold a gold statue.

It is a record of endurance that suggests Anderson’s real talent isn’t filmmaking, but his ability to maintain a polite “I’m just happy to be here” face while losing to people who make movies about green witches or fast cars.

The Autonomy of the Auteur

The 2026 nominations also highlight a growing – and slightly narcissistic – trend among the industry’s elite, as for the third time in history, every single nominee for Best Director is also nominated for writing their own film.

Ryan Coogler (Sinners), Paul Thomas Anderson (One Battle After Another), Chloé Zhao (Hamnet), Josh Safdie (Marty Supreme), and Joachim Trier (Sentimental Value) have all collectively decided that delegating tasks is for people with less visionary hair.

Josh Safdie, in particular, has joined the “Four-Nomination Club,” securing nods for Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, and Editing for Marty Supreme, and he is only the twelfth person to achieve this status in a single year.

The Demographic Shifts

Behind the raw numbers, several individual records have been quietly shattered:

• Steven Spielberg: With Hamnet, he extends his own record as the most-nominated producer in Best Picture history, with 14 nominations.
• Dede Gardner: Producing the “Dad Cinema” movie F1, Gardner has secured her ninth Best Picture nomination, making her the most-nominated woman in the history of the category, where she has officially broken her tie with Kathleen Kennedy, though one assumes they still exchange polite, terrifyingly powerful emails.
• Emma Stone: By securing nominations for both Best Actress and Best Picture for Bugonia, Stone has become the youngest person – and the only woman – to achieve this double nomination feat twice.
• Ruth E. Carter: Her costume design nomination for Sinners makes her the most nominated Black woman in Oscar history with five nods.

The Genre Paradox

Perhaps the most startling record of 2026 is the Academy’s sudden, feverish embrace of the macabre, as this year saw the most nominations for films that can be broadly classified as “horror,” including Sinners, Weapons, Frankenstein, and The Ugly Stepsister – the previous record was 10 nominations, set back in the 1970s, so it appears the Academy has finally realized that the real world is currently so horrifying that a vampire epic or a reanimated corpse feels like a relaxing romantic comedy by comparison.

The Host and the Hologram

As we prepare for Conan O’Brien to host a ceremony that will likely last longer than a standard work week, the vibe around it all seems to be one of exhausted triumph – we are celebrating the “Big Screen” while acknowledging that most of these films will be watched at 1.5x speed on a tablet by mid-April.

The Oscars are no longer just an awards show – they are a data-entry exercise, where we are rewarding the “Forever Star,” the “Synthetic Resurrections,” and the filmmakers who refuse to hire a separate editor, so when the dust settles and the statues are handed out, the true winner will be the statistician who managed to keep track of it all without developing a facial tic.

In the end, whether Sinners sweeps the board or Paul Thomas Anderson finally breaks his losing streak, the 98th Academy Awards will be remembered as the year we stopped counting quality and started counting records.

Just make sure you’ve cleared your calendar for the next three to five years to watch it all.

Simon Leasher

A lover of cinema for over 35 years, I have watched many films from around the world in many different genres, yet I still normally always come back to trashy slasher horror films when in doubt. More

And yes, The Godfather 2 is better than The Godfather.