Hollywood’s biggest night has come and gone, and the 98th Academy Awards delivered the kind of ceremony that will be talked about for a while. Two films went head to head across the whole awards season, one won the night, the other left with its share of glory, and Conan O’Brien reminded everyone why he was invited back to host a second time.

Here is everything that happened and everyone who won.

The Film of the Night

Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another was the story of the evening. The Warner Bros. film led all films with six wins, taking home Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor for Sean Penn, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing, and the first-ever Oscar for Best Casting, which went to Cassandra Kulukundis. A dominant, deserved sweep for a film that had been a frontrunner all season.

Accepting Best Picture, Anderson offered a moment of genuine grace: he pointed to the 1975 Best Picture nominees, a field that included Dog Day Afternoon, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Jaws, Nashville, and Barry Lyndon, and said there is no best among them, just what the mood might be that day. The room felt it.

Sinners Makes History

Ryan Coogler’s Sinners came into the night with 16 nominations, the most in Oscar history, surpassing the previous record of 14 shared by All About Eve, Titanic, and La La Land. It left with four wins and, more importantly, a place in the cultural conversation that no number of statuettes could fully measure.

Michael B. Jordan won Best Actor for playing twins Smoke and Stack in the Depression-era vampire film, becoming the latest name on a list he acknowledged in full: Sidney Poitier, Denzel Washington, Halle Berry, Jamie Foxx, Forest Whitaker, Will Smith. Ryan Coogler won Best Original Screenplay. Ludwig Göransson took his third career Oscar for Best Score, paying tribute to his father in an emotional speech. Sinners also won Best Cinematography.

The Other Big Winners

Jessie Buckley won Best Actress for her role as Agnes Shakespeare in Hamnet, a performance that had been building awards momentum all season. Amy Madigan won Best Supporting Actress for Weapons. Netflix’s Frankenstein, directed by Guillermo del Toro, had a strong crafts showing with three wins including Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Costume Design, and Best Production Design. KPop Demon Hunters won Best Animated Feature. The documentary Mr. Nobody Against Putin took Best Documentary Feature. Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value won Best International Feature Film. F1 won Best Sound. And the ceremony made a small piece of Oscars history when The Singers and Two People Exchanging Saliva tied for Best Live Action Short, only the seventh tie in the Academy’s history.

The Ceremony Itself

Conan O’Brien opened by dashing through scenes from nominated films dressed as Aunt Gladys and was promptly sent onstage as Amy Madigan’s Weapons character, complete with red wig and white makeup. It set the tone: warm, self-aware, genuinely funny without being mean-spirited.

The In Memoriam segment was restructured this year to open with a personal tribute from Billy Crystal to his close friend Rob Reiner, who passed away along with his wife Michele. Barbra Streisand paid tribute to her The Way We Were co-star Robert Redford and sang from the film’s Oscar-winning theme. Both moments landed with quiet, earned weight.

And then there was the Anne Hathaway and Anna Wintour moment, which the internet has already claimed as its own.

A Historic Night All Round

This was the first Oscars ceremony to include Best Casting as a competitive category, the first new Oscar since Best Animated Feature was introduced in 2001. It was also the first ceremony under new voting rules requiring members to watch every nominated film in a category before casting their ballot. And Sinners broke the record for the most nominations ever received by a single film. All of that before a single award was handed out.

The 2026 Oscars delivered the rare thing: a ceremony where the films, the moments, and the winners all felt like they genuinely deserved to be there.

The Full Winners List

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 Animated Feature: KPop Demon Hunters

Best International Feature Film: Sentimental Value

Best Documentary Feature: Mr. Nobody Against Putin

Best Original Screenplay: Ryan Coogler, Sinners

Best Adapted Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another

Best Cinematography: Sinners

Best Film Editing: One Battle After Another

Best Original Score: Ludwig Göransson, Sinners

Best Costume Design: Frankenstein

Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Frankenstein

Best Production Design: Frankenstein

Best Sound: F1

Best Visual Effects: One Battle After Another

Best Casting: Cassandra Kulukundis, One Battle After Another

Best Animated Short: The Girl Who Cried Pearls

Best Live Action Short: The Singers and Two People Exchanging Saliva (tie)

Best Documentary Short: All the Empty Rooms

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