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The Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles is buzzing, the red carpet is packed, and Hollywood's biggest night is officially underway. Welcome to our live coverage of the 98th Academy Awards.
This year's Oscars come with unusually high stakes. Ryan Coogler's Sinners has emerged as the night's biggest juggernaut, racking up a staggering 16 nominations. Close behind are Marty Supreme and The Grapes of Wrath, both hoping to spoil the party and take home some of the evening's biggest trophies.
Overseeing the chaos, glamour, and inevitable viral moments is host Conan O'Brien, who is expected to open the show with a sharp monologue and later lead a special tribute to the late filmmaker Rob Reiner.
There's also a strong Indian connection this year. Priyanka Chopra is part of the star-studded lineup of presenters, giving Indian viewers another reason to tune in.
The 2026 Academy Awards will stream live on JioHotstar, while television viewers can catch the broadcast on Star Movies and Star World.
Stay right here. We'll be updating this live blog throughout the ceremony with real-time winners, big speeches, viral stage moments, and everything you may have missed while blinking. The night has only just begun.
Sean Penn named Best Actor In A Supporting Role for One Battle After Another!
American actor Penn has claimed the third Academy Award of his career, this time for his chilling yet darkly comedic performance in the political thriller One Battle After Another.
Penn stars as Colonel Steven Lockjaw, a hardened military officer whose fleeting run‑in with a band of militant activists spirals into a lifelong obsession — a role he plays with unnerving precision and razor‑sharp wit.
Succession's darling Roman Roy, better known as Kieran Culkin, who won Best Supporting Actor at the 97th Oscars (2025) for his role as Benji Kaplan in A Real Pain, presented the Oscar this year.
Best Live Action Short Film Award sees a tie!
'Two People Exchanging Saliva' and 'Singers' now become the seventh instance of a tie on the Oscars stage.
Cassandra Kulukundis wins the iconic Best Casting award for One Battle After Another.
One Battle After Another features a commanding ensemble, with standout performances from rising talents like Teyana Taylor and Chase Infiniti, alongside sharp, comedic turns from Oscar winners Sean Penn and Leonardo DiCaprio.
Cassandra Kulukundis, who began her career as an intern for director Paul Thomas Anderson, is now being recognized for her casting work on his latest film — a sweeping, multigenerational story that weaves together activism, politics, and family.
“I dedicate this to you and to the casting directors who never got a chance to get up here, who didn’t even get a chance to get their name on the movie," she says.
Sinners thrilled audiences with a vibrant sequence celebrating the musical and cultural contributions of different communities throughout U.S. history.
Onstage, a brief live performance recreated the film’s atmospheric setting — an old factory reimagined as a juke joint, the kind of lively, improvised venue once central to music, dance, food, and social life in African American communities across the American South.
This new category will honour the directors who assemble the actors that bring a film's story to life. This is the first new category to be added to the Oscars in 25 years, after the Best Animated Feature was introduced in 2001.
The nominees for this historic first Best Casting Oscar are films that have already dominated awards season buzz. Nina Gold is nominated for Hamnet, Jennifer Venditti for Marty Supreme, Cassandra Kulukundis for One Battle After Another, Gabriel Domingues for The Secret Agent, and Francine Maisler for Sinners, which is leading this year's nominations.
Frankenstein's Mike Hill, Jordan Samuel, and Cliona Furey win the award for the Best Makeup and Hairstyling.
Creating Frankenstein’s monster for Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation required extraordinary precision — with makeup artists spending up to 10 hours a day transforming Jacob Elordi into the iconic creature.
Frankenstein's Kate Hawley wins the Academy award for Best Costume Design.
She appreciates and honours her peers, her director, the Netflix family, and the fans in her 'thank you' speech.
Kate Hawley has also officially become the first winner of the night to get bleeped on stage, after letting slip a swear word during her acceptance speech.
“To my family, who have put up with a lot of sh**.”
Anne Hathaway and Anna Wintour make their way to the stage as presenters for the next awards for Best Costume Design, and Best Makeup and Hairstyling.
Presenters for the Animation awards, actors Will Arnett and Channing Tatum, also fired shots at using AI for filmamking.
"Tonight we are celebrating people, not AI, because animation, it’s more than a prompt.”
There have also been strong, heartfelt calls within the creative community urging the industry to continue prioritizing human artistry over AI‑generated work.
“People think it takes patience to take five years to make a puppet film,” the filmmakers behind The Girl Who Cried Pearls said. “Actually it takes patience to live with someone who takes five years to make a puppet film.”
The Girl Who Cried Pearls is named the Best Animated Short Film.
Award‑winning filmmakers Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczęsny embarked on a five‑year creative journey to bring this vision to life.
For their latest National Film Board project, they pushed the limits of their craft, meeting the painstaking frame‑by‑frame demands of stop‑motion animation — the medium that has long defined their work. Their handcrafted puppets had to move, emote, and exist within a meticulously recreated version of early‑20th‑century Montreal, a city they brought to life with intricate detail and imaginative flair across the film’s dazzling 16-minute runtime.
K-Pop Demon Hunters wins the award for Best Animated Feature Film.
Maggie Kang gets emotional during her speech, and dedicates the award to Korea.
Amy Madigan wins the award for 'Best Actress In A Supporting Role' for her role in Weapons.
It's been 40 years since her last Oscar nomination in 1986.
American comedian and television host Conan O'Brien returns as the host of the 98th Academy Awards in 2026, marking his second consecutive year leading Hollywood's biggest night.
Known for his witty humour, sharp writing and decades-long career in late-night television, O'Brien is one of the most recognisable comedians in the entertainment industry.
Indian-American filmmaker Geeta Gandbhir is emerging as one of the standout contenders at this year’s Oscars. She has earned nominations in two major categories—Best Documentary Feature for The Perfect Neighbor and Best Documentary Short Film for The Devil is Busy.
Her double nod has generated significant excitement among Indian audiences, many of whom are hoping she will create history at the 2026 Academy Awards.
Conan O'Brien's opening skit makes for a compelling start!
In a pre‑recorded comedy sketch, Conan appeared dressed as a character from Weapons, jokingly referring to himself as “Bette Davis with lupus.” The montage showed him racing through scenes inspired by some of the year’s biggest films — being chased by children, sprinting across an F1 track, playing ping pong, slipping back into Elizabethan England, and even transforming into an animated character for KPop Demon Hunters. He also shared a brief moment speaking Norwegian with actor Stellan Skarsgård before suddenly appearing in Sinners.
A humourous take on drama, and a dig at AI, saying he's probably the last human host of the Oscars.
He follows it up with a comment on the security tightening at the Oscars, with a joke at the expense of Timothee Chalamet, and his ballet remarks.
And it's about to start in a few moments!
Months of awards season — from the Golden Globes and BAFTAs to the SAG Awards and guild honours — often act as Hollywood's unofficial crystal ball, revealing which films and performances have captured industry support.
The numbers already tell a compelling story: a dominant Best Picture frontrunner, a sweeping Best Actress campaign, a film leading the nominations tally, and one acting race that remains completely up in the air.
The countdown to the 2026 Oscars is underway, with the spotlight firmly on the nominees. As the 98th Academy Awards approach, with Conan O'Brien hosting the ceremony at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles in just a few minutes, here is a guide to the nominees for Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Picture.
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