The 2025 Academy Awards have come and gone, and now that we can get the awards season behind us, we start to look ahead to the wonderful slate of films for the rest of 2025. Now two years removed from the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes and with a full year of uninterrupted production in the books, there are a lot of exciting films coming to theaters and streaming this year. Let’s attempt to create an early Best Picture list of what I think will be the 10 nominees come this time in 2026, in no particular order of course. This will be the first part of a series where I will attempt to predict the “above the line” nominees in acting and directing for this year’s films. Here are my 2026 Best Picture predictions. The odds of me getting more than three of these correct is quite high, so take that as you will.
The Materialists
Celine Song’s follow-up to the highly acclaimed Past Lives stars Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal in a romantic comedy about a matchmaker in a love triangle that threatens her clients. The movie, shot on 35mm film, is bound to be a hit. If Chris Evans can regain the form he showcased in films like Knives Out and Snowpiercer and A24 can nail the distribution, the film could be a smash hit.
Wicked: For Good
If 2025 has taught us anything, it’s that Wicked is a sensation. The first film was nominated for Best Picture and also saw stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande nominated in their respective acting categories. 2025’s Wicked: For Good should be no different. Each year since the Academy expanded the nominees to 10 in 2009 with the exception of the COVID-impacted 2020 year has seen at least one true box office hit get nominated for Best Picture. I predict Wicked: For Good will end up being that film.
Train Dreams
The little-known film Train Dreams starring Joel Edgerton and Felicity Jones was hardly on anyone’s radars until it premiered at Sundance in January 2025. It quickly became the most talked about film of the festival. It released to critical acclaim, holding a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes amongst critics. Netflix quickly scooped it up thereafter. It’s no secret that Netflix desperately wants a Best Picture win, and Train Dreams may just be its best chance in 2026.
Untitled Paul Thomas Anderson Film
Paul Thomas Anderson’ hotly anticipated yet currently unnamed follow up project to 2021’s Licorice Pizza could be one of the best of the year. Rumored to be named One Battle After Another, the film will star Leonardo DiCaprio, Regina Hall, Sean Penn, Alana Haim and Teyana Taylor and is rumored to be loosely inspired by the Thomas Pynchon novel “Vineland” (1990). Little is truly known about the film, but with PTA’s reputation and the loaded cast it’s bound to be a hit.
Michael
It’s no secret that the Academy loves a good biopic. It’s also true that musical biopics are incredibly popular, as we’ve seen both Bohemian Rhapsody and A Complete Unknown snag nominations in recent years. In 2025, we’ll see both Michael, a film about Michael Jackson starring his nephew Jaafar Jackson in the title role, and Deliver Me From Nowhere, a biopic on Bruce Springsteen starring The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White, hit theaters. While both could be good, I think the pure popularity of Michael Jackson will give it the edge amongst voters in my 2026 best picture predictions.
Die, My Love
This is admittedly a more obscure pick, but if this past year has taught us, anything is possible. Die, My Love is a dark comedy horror film adapted from the book by Ariana Harwicz and directed by Lynne Ramsey. The film stars Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson and is produced by Lawrence’s Excellent Cadaver production company. While horror is never completely admired by the academy, last year showed that they’re willing to recognize horror with The Substance scoring a Best Picture nomination and even pulling down a win. Die, My Love could similarly appeal to the voter base as a horror film with deep messaging about women’s issues. It’s also the first film for Ramsey since her critically acclaimed 2017 neo-noir crime thriller You Were Never Really Here.
The Ballad of a Small Player
The Ballad of a Small Player is another Netflix-distributed film that could get some real awards attention. It’s also no secret that the Academy loves Edward Berger’s recent films with both Conclave and All Quiet on the Western Front both being nominated for Best Picture. The film is set to star Tilda Swinton and Colin Farrell in a story about a con artist and a gambler who flee from Britain to Macau. Little else is known about the film, but if history proves anything, it could shape up to be a serious awards contender and fits in here in my 2026 best picture predictions.
After The Hunt
Luca Guadagnino went all of 2024 without an Oscar nomination despite having two films that were most certainly worthy of nominations. Challengers was shockingly snubbed for it’s score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and Daniel Craig’s Queer was on the cusp of the Best Actor race, just missing out despite nominations in other awards throughout the year. That all can change with 2025’s After The Hunt, a thriller about a college professor who is forced to grapple with her secretive past after a colleague is faced with a serious accusation. The film will star Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield, Michael Stuhlbarg and Chloë Sevigny and feels like the type of film that will get Guadagnino back into the awards spotlight he enjoyed with 2017’s Call Me By Your Name.
The Life of Chuck
The Life of Chuck may just be one of the early favorites for the Best Picture race. The film, made by horror legend Mike Flanagan, is an adaptation of the novella by Stephen King but is notably not a horror film. Instead, it’s a sci-fi drama film that stars Tom Hiddleston, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, Mark Hamill, Jacob Tremblay, and Nick Offerman. At 2024’s Toronto International Film Festival, it won the People’s Choice award, a notable win as the last 12 winners and 15 of the last 16 went on to be nominated for Best Picture. Additionally, the film is being distributed by Neon, who just came off a win for Anora at this year’s Academy Awards and whose CEO just said they spent $18 million – triple the film’s production budget – to campaign for Best Picture. This may be as close as we get to a surefire nominee this early in the year for my 2026 best picture predictions.
Nouvelle Vague
Richard Linklater’s bold new French-Language film has a lot of question marks to it. But, if Linklater can really nail the execution of the film, it has a lot going for it. Each year since 2018 (minus 2020’s COVID year) and 2 years after the Academy launched an initiative to expand its voter pool to include more international and diverse voters, we’ve seen a foreign language film get nominated for Best Picture, and one has won (Parasite in 2019). Plus, the academy has had no issues with nominating films made by filmmakers from one country set in the language of another. Last year’s Emilia Pérez proved that. This could prove to be a lucrative move for Linklater and Nouvelle Vague could be our foreign language film in 2026.
Honorable Mentions: Mickey 17, Late Fame, F1, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, Avatar: Fire and Ash, Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein, Deliver Me From Nowhere, Hamnet, Highest 2 Lowest, The Lost Bus, Marty Supreme, The Phoenician Scheme, Sentimental Value.
And that’s my list of predictions for the 2026 best picture race. There will inevitably be a few films that I left out that get nominations, some that may bomb, and others that may make it that aren’t even on our radars right now. Of course, that’s the fun in these way-too-early predictions. Stay tuned for an early prediction on the Best Actor race for 2026 soon.
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I have been watching movies my whole life and fell in love at an early age. I was entranced by the ability for a film to whisk me away to a different universe, and that really started with the Star Wars Franchise. I'm by no means an expert and can roll with opinions that might be controversial, but that's the beauty of a film; we can all see the same thing on screen, but each of us may come away with a different interpretation of what we saw. When I'm not watching movies, I work in Marketing with my degree from Western New England University.
MY FAVORITE MOVIES: Good Will Hunting, Star Wars: A New Hope (or the whole saga), All The President's Men, Before Sunrise, Ocean's 11, In The Mood For Love and so many more...