Film awards season explained: key dates to the 2027 Oscars
Film awards season explained: key dates from Venice and Toronto to the 2027 Oscars on 14 March, who votes for each prize and how winners are chosen.
Why it matters
The festival, critics and guild prizes between now and March shape which films reach the Oscars, and knowing who votes for each one explains why they sometimes disagree.
Film awards season is the six-month run of festival prizes, critics’ awards and guild votes that ends at the Oscars. This season the finish line is Sunday 14 March 2027, when the 99th Academy Awards are handed out at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.
Quick answer: Awards season starts with the late-summer festivals in Venice and Toronto, builds through critics’ prizes and the Golden Globes in early January, and peaks with the guild awards and Britain’s BAFTAs in February. Oscar nominations are announced on 21 January 2027 and the ceremony is on 14 March 2027.
Right now, in late October 2026, the season is in its quiet middle stretch. The festival premieres are over, studios are running “For Your Consideration” screenings for voters, and the paperwork deadlines are close. Films hoping for Best Picture must be entered with the Academy by 12 November.
The 2026-27 season, date by date
The festivals that launched this year’s contenders have already handed out their prizes. Everything after that is on the calendar below.
- 12 Sep 2026: The 83rd Venice Film Festival closes. Its top prize, the Golden Lion, goes to Woman Unknown, directed by May el-Toukhy, from a jury led by Maggie Gyllenhaal.
- 20 Sep 2026: The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) closes. Its audience award, the People’s Choice Award, goes to La Bola Negra, directed by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi.
- 12 Nov 2026: Final deadline for Oscar entries, including Best Picture.
- 7 Dec 2026: Golden Globe nominations.
- 15 Dec 2026: The Academy announces its shortlists in categories such as International Feature, after preliminary voting from 7 to 11 December.
- 3 Jan 2027: Critics Choice Awards, Santa Monica, California.
- 10 Jan 2027: Golden Globes, Beverly Hilton hotel, Beverly Hills.
- 19 Jan 2027: BAFTA nominations.
- 21 Jan 2027: Oscar nominations, after members vote from 11 to 15 January.
- 30 Jan 2027: Directors Guild of America (DGA) Awards.
- 21 Feb 2027: BAFTA Film Awards, London.
- 27 Feb 2027: Producers Guild of America (PGA) Awards.
- 28 Feb 2027: The Actor Awards from the SAG-AFTRA union, formerly the SAG Awards, streamed live on Netflix.
- 14 Mar 2027: The 99th Oscars. Final voting runs from 25 February to 4 March.
The Oscars broadcast starts at 7 p.m. Eastern time on ABC, which is 23:00 GMT. US clocks go forward that same morning, so viewers in Europe should check the time again closer to the night.
Who actually votes for each award
Each award has a different electorate, and that explains most of the surprises in a season.
| Award | Who votes | 2027 ceremony |
|---|---|---|
| Critics Choice | Members of the Critics Choice Association, a body of film and TV critics | 3 Jan |
| Golden Globes | International entertainment journalists | 10 Jan |
| DGA Awards | Members of the Directors Guild of America | 30 Jan |
| BAFTA | Members of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts | 21 Feb |
| PGA Awards | Members of the Producers Guild of America | 27 Feb |
| Actor Awards | Members of the SAG-AFTRA actors’ union | 28 Feb |
| Oscars | About 10,300 voting members of the Academy | 14 Mar |
Source: Academy, DGA, BAFTA, Golden Globes, Critics Choice Association and SAG-AFTRA announcements, April to July 2026.
The guilds matter most because their members overlap with the Academy’s. Many directors in the DGA, producers in the PGA and actors in SAG-AFTRA also sit in the Academy’s directors, producers and actors branches. The critics’ groups and the Golden Globes have little or no overlap. Their wins can lift a film’s profile in January, but they say less about how Academy members will vote.
How a film qualifies for an Oscar
The Academy’s rules for the 99th awards are specific. A feature film needs a theatrical release in the 2026 calendar year: a run of at least seven consecutive days in one commercial cinema in one of six US areas (Los Angeles County, New York City, the San Francisco Bay Area, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth or Atlanta). It must play at least three times a day, with at least one show starting between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m.
A film shown first on television or a streaming service is out. The rules allow a film to go to streaming on or after the first day of its qualifying cinema run, which is how streamers such as Netflix compete. That interplay between cinema runs and streaming is covered in our explainer on how release windows work.
Best Picture asks for more. Since the 2024 film year, a contender must also complete an “expanded theatrical run”: at least seven days of screenings in nine more markets from the 50 largest in the US, making ten in all, within 45 days of its first qualifying run. Up to two of those markets may be outside the US with the Academy’s approval. Best Picture entrants must also meet two of the Academy’s four representation and inclusion standards, which cover who works on and in a film.
International Feature, the category for films mainly not in English, has its own window, from 1 October 2025 to 30 September 2026. Until this year a country’s official selection committee was the only route in. For the 99th awards a non-English-language film can also qualify by winning a qualifying award at an international festival on the Academy’s list, and the Oscar now goes to the film, accepted by its director, rather than to the country.
How the Academy turns about 10,300 ballots into winners
The Academy invited 529 new members in June 2026. If all of them accept, it will have 11,319 members, of whom 10,338 can vote, according to the Academy’s figures reported by Variety and Deadline.
Nominations are mostly decided within professions. Actors nominate actors, editors nominate editors, and so on. Every voting member can nominate for Best Picture, ranking up to 10 films, and the 10 films with the most support become the nominees.
In the final round all members can vote in every category, with one condition added for the 2026 ceremony: a member must have watched all the nominees in a category to vote in it. The 99th rules repeat that requirement. The Academy checks viewing through its members-only streaming platform, and members who saw a film elsewhere, such as at a festival, file a form.
Best Picture is decided by a preferential ballot. Members rank the nominees, the film with the fewest first-place votes is eliminated, and its ballots pass to each voter’s next choice until one film has a majority. The system rewards broad support. A film that many voters rank second or third can beat one that a passionate minority ranks first.
That method dates to 2009, when the Academy doubled the Best Picture field from five to 10. The change followed criticism that popular films such as The Dark Knight had been left out, although the Academy never said that was the reason. In 2011 the Academy switched to a sliding number of nominees between five and 10, and a fixed 10 returned for the ceremony in 2022.
Why the Golden Globes changed who votes
For decades the Globes were voted on by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a group of fewer than 100 journalists. In 2021 a Los Angeles Times investigation reported that the association had no Black members and raised questions about payments to members. NBC dropped the 2022 broadcast.
In June 2023 the association sold the Globes to Eldridge Industries and Dick Clark Productions and was dissolved. The voting body was rebuilt around a larger group of international entertainment journalists. The Globes are now a commercial event, broadcast on CBS and Paramount+ in the US, and Nikki Glaser hosts for the third year running.
The larger, more international electorate makes the Globes harder to read than they used to be. The voters are journalists, not film workers, so a Globe win still says little about how the Academy will vote.
Do the earlier awards predict the Oscars?
Often, and the last season showed both the pattern and its limits.
One Battle After Another, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, won the DGA’s top film prize on 7 February 2026, Best Film at the BAFTAs on 22 February and the PGA’s top award on 28 February. On 15 March it won Best Picture at the 98th Oscars, along with Best Director for Anderson.
The acting races split. At the BAFTAs, Best Actor went to Robert Aramayo for I Swear. At the Oscars, it went to Michael B. Jordan for Sinners. The two academies have different memberships, and in close races they can disagree.
The Toronto audience prize has the strongest record of any festival award. Its winners Green Book (2018) and Nomadland (2020) both went on to win Best Picture. It is also an audience vote, which explains why a crowd-pleaser can win in Toronto and stall later with industry voters.
The useful rule is to weigh each prize by how many of its voters are Academy members. A sweep of the DGA, PGA and actors’ awards is a strong signal. A Golden Globe or a critics’ prize on its own is a weak one.
What campaigning is allowed
Studios spend the autumn on screenings, question-and-answer sessions with filmmakers, advertising and press tours. The Academy publishes campaign regulations each year to stop this tipping into lobbying. For the 99th awards, screenings with Q&As may have up to two moderators, and certain email campaigns must include a contact for accessibility requests.
The rules are tested at the edges. In January 2023 Andrea Riseborough received a surprise Best Actress nomination for the low-budget To Leslie after a campaign driven by fellow actors on social media. The Academy reviewed it and let the nomination stand. Its chief executive, Bill Kramer, said the activity did not rise to the level of rescinding the nomination, but that some social media and outreach tactics had “caused concern.” The Academy said afterwards that parts of the rules needed clarifying.
The new rules to watch for the 99th Oscars
The Academy announced its rules for this season on 1 May 2026. Three changes could shape the results:
- Multiple acting nominations: An actor can now be nominated for more than one performance in the same category if both finish in the top five.
- Human authorship: Screenplays must be written by humans, acting nominations are limited to roles performed by humans with their consent, and the Academy may ask how generative AI was used in a film.
- A festival route for International Feature: The new path through festival awards means a non-English-language film can reach the category even if its country picks another.
What to watch between now and March
The first hard signal of the Oscar race arrives on 15 December, when the Academy publishes its shortlists. The second is the run of guild nominations in early January, including the DGA’s nominees on 7 January. By the time Oscar nominations are read on 21 January, the guild lists usually give a strong hint of which films are in the Best Picture race.
One longer-term change is coming too. In December 2025 the Academy agreed to move the Oscars from ABC to YouTube from the 2029 ceremony, leaving ABC, its longtime home. ABC keeps the show through the 100th Oscars on 5 March 2028.
