2026 Oscars Best Picture Prediction: Which Movie Has The Best Chance To Win

Every year, the Academy Awards coronate the best movie of the year, but whether or not they get it right is pretty subjective. Famously, movies like "Brokeback Mountain" and "BlacKkKlansman" lost to outright duds like "Crash" and "Green Book," and even less egregious offenses, like "The Social Network" losing to the relatively boilerplate Oscar bait movie "The King's Speech," still sting. So with that in mind, what's probably going to win best picture at the 98th Academy Awards on March 15? Here's your answer: it'll almost certainly be "One Battle After Another."

Let's start by looking at our list of 10 nominees ... which is, honestly, pretty solid across the board here. Brad Pitt's Apple original "F1" sits comfortably in the "big noisy blockbuster" slot alongside Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone's latest bonkers collaboration "Bugonia," and Guillermo del Toro, whose film "The Shape of Water" won the big prize in 2018, is back in the game with his take on "Frankenstein." Things get weepy in the Shakespeare retelling "Hamnet" and tense and stressful in Timothée Chalamet's ping-pong dramedy "Marty Supreme," and Paul Thomas Anderson's incisive "One Battle After Another" proves that art and politics remain permanently intertwined.

So, for that matter, does Ryan Coogler's ambitious blockbuster "Sinners" — with two Michael B. Jordans at the helm. International entries "Sentimental Value" and "The Secret Agent," directed by Joachim Trier and Kleber Mendonça Filho respectively, round out the category alongside Netflix's quietly affecting drama "Train Dreams." Still, "One Battle After Another" seems poised to emerge victorious during the ceremony ... not just because it's racked up a ton of precursors, but because it's legitimately one of the finest movies of the year.

Paul Thomas Anderson's "One Battle After Another" centers itself around a group of revolutionaries that call themselves the French 75, including Teyana Taylor's Perfidia Beverly Hills and Leonardo DiCaprio's Pat Calhoun — whose name later changes to Bob Ferguson when he and his renamed daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) go into hiding. After Perfidia's arrest and subsequent desertion of her boyfriend and daughter, Bob is intensely protective of Willa ... and must go on a madcap mission to rescue her from imminent danger at the hands of Colonel Steven Lockjaw, a straight-up demon played by Sean Penn.

At this point in the Oscar race, the only true competition for "One Battle After Another" is "Sinners," a movie about twins Elijah "Smoke" and Elias "Stack" Moore (both played by Michael B. Jordan) who decide to open a juke joint in the rural Mississippi Delta after some time in Chicago. To be honest, the fact that the Oscar for best picture is almost definitely going to "One Battle After Another" or "Sinners" proves that 2025 provided an embarrassment of riches for moviegoers; even though Anderson's American masterpiece will likely net him best picture and a shiny best director trophy to go with it, Ryan Coogler seems poised to take home best original screenplay and could very well beat out Anderson based on a recent surge of affection for the very worthy "Sinners."

Still, if we're placing bets, "One Battle After Another" remains the movie to watch in the best picture race. Anderson won best director at the Directors Guild of America Awards in February 2026, and the film's producers took the top prize at the Producers Guild of America Awards that same month. So, are there any other potential spoilers? Not really.

Sometimes, international films get strange representation at the Academy Awards, and Joachim Trier's "Sentimental Value" is actually a perfect example of such a thing. So is 2020's best picture winner, "Parasite," which won awards for its writer and director Bong Joon-ho as well as the night's big prize but received zero acting nods, as if the movie propelled itself forward without any great performances. Conversely, "Sentimental Value" received a very strong showing when the Oscar nominations were announced, particularly in the acting categories: Renate Reinsve earned one for best actress, Elle Fanning and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas are both represented in the supporting actress category, and Stellan Skarsgård shows up in the crowded, competitive supporting actor race.

There is almost no world where "Sentimental Value" wins the Oscar for best picture, and honestly? That's a shame! Even though an offbeat pick like "Bugonia" or "Frankenstein" would be even weird and a bigger upset, "Sentimental Value" hasn't won any of the precursors from the directing or producing guilds, and even though the central cast has been nominated quite a bit at awards like the Actor Awards and the Golden Globes, they haven't been winning. In a year that's not quite as strong as 2025, "Sentimental Value" — the story of playwright Gustav Borg (Skarsgård), his ongoing work, and his fractured relationship with his daughters — might come away with the big prize, particularly because it's Trier's most recognized work to date. During this particular year, though, "Sentimental Value" is the longest of long shots.

The Oscars air on ABC and Hulu at 7 p.m. EST.