Predicting the Best Picture at the 2026 Academy Awards | R bloggers

January 12, 2026

I’m back with the Oscars Best Picture model, albeit a little late. I had a busy holiday season, but December’s story was surprising: The secret agent was the favorite, followed by One battle after another. This largely came through The secret agent’s runtime, which is just right for the Best Picture winners.

However, remember from the past two years that my model is assuming these films are nominated for Best Picture. The biggest barrier we face The secret agent is nominated; it is a non-English language film. While it is the only non-English film to win Parasite (2019), the nominations are rare enough that, as the film has been nominatedthe lack of English dialogue is no obstacle to this win. The DGA and PGA nominations make me think The secret agent however, will not be nominated.

That surprised me too One battle after another was no longer favored, as Paul Thomas Anderson is a phenomenal writer-director, but none of his films have won Best Picture. Looking at the data, it looks like it’s a “career award.” not much of a thing for Best Picture (as it seems to be for the acting and directing categories). Quite the opposite: if a director has previously nominated or won Best Picture for a film, then so be it hurts their chances of winning in my model.

That was then, but this is now. There are no more awards in my models that will name nominees or winners before the Oscar nominations. Where do we stand going into the announcement?

One battle after another is the favorite, with about a 15% chance of winning. The close monitoring is The secret agent (10%), followed by Marty Supreme (9%), Hamnet (8%), Bad: forever (8%), and Frankenstein (8%).

You can read more about the details of the model at my post from last year And the year before. The big change I made here is to calibrate the probabilities so that the model isn’t too sure of itself. I’ll see you on the other side of the Oscar nominations.

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