In a twist on the usual awards calendar, the 2026 BAFTA nominations dropped after — and not before, as in prior years — Academy voters unveiled their final nominees for the 2026 Academy Awards. That means that, say, One Battle After Another scoring 14 BAFTA nominations and Sinners nabbing 13 won’t impact how either film fares in terms of Oscar nods. In fact, we already know that Sinners won that particular battle against One Battle with a history-making 16 nominations.
But this morning’s notable nominations — and even more notable omissions — could lend some clarity to the still-emerging race to win an Oscar, and not just an Oscar nomination. Gold Derby spotted five specific snubs and surprises that may have ramifications for these closing weeks of Oscar campaigning.
Song sung Kate
Back in December, Hugh Jackman made his Song Sung Blue costar Kate Hudson cringe just a little when he interrupted their joint Gotham Awards presentation to predict that she’d win the Best Actress Oscar. Maybe Wolverine knew something the rest of us didn’t. What seemed like a long-shot late-season Best Actress campaign has instead left former rivals like Amanda Seyfried and Cynthia Erivo singing the blues. With her BAFTA nomination, Hudson — who was previously nominated 25 years ago for her breakout supporting turn in Almost Famous — has now scored Best Actress nods at the Golden Globes, the SAG Actor Awards, and the Oscars, only missing out on a Critics Choice mention.
That puts her on more than equal footing with fellow nominees Jessie Buckley, Rose Byrne, Renate Reinsve, and Emma Stone, and, in fact, gives her an edge over the Sentimental Value star, who missed completely with SAG voters, one of the biggest voting blocks in the Academy. Hudson is still lagging in fifth place on Gold Derby’s Best Actress leaderboard, with Buckley comfortably ahead and Byrne in a distant spoiler position. It may seem like an insurmountable lead, but Hudson has shown she’s an eager campaigner with a famous family — including parents Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell — that’s more than happy to get involved. The next few weeks could transform her from an almost winner into an actual winner.
Best Actress
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Rose Byrne
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
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Renate Reinsve
Sentimental Value
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Kate Hudson
Song Sung Blue
Gone, Gladys, gone?
Horror doesn’t have the best track record at the Oscars, but Amy Madigan has seemed poised to join a super-short shortlist of scary movie performances to win acting honors — think Ruth Gordon in Rosemary’s Baby, Kathy Bates in Misery, and Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs. But after a Critic’s Choice win at the start of the year, the Weapons scene-stealer missed out on a repeat victory at the Golden Globes with Teyana Taylor taking the prize instead. The two will face each other again at the Actor Awards, but crucially not at the BAFTAs, as Madigan failed to make the Best Supporting Actress cut.
In recent weeks, Madigan has fallen out of No. 1 contention on our Oscar leaderboard among expert predictors; she’s currently sitting at No. 3 behind Wunmi Mosaku at No. 2 and Taylor in the pole position. The BAFTA miss is unlikely to improve her odds as it indicates the horror bias could be a hurdle that even Aunt Gladys can’t blast her way through. With Mosaku facing the same issue for Sinners, Perfidia Beverly Hills may emerge victorious from this particular battle.
Best Supporting Actress
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Teyana Taylor
One Battle After Another
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Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas
Sentimental Value
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Elle Fanning
Sentimental Value
Lindo in Limbo
Sinners star Delroy Lindo pulled off the rare Oscar feat of scoring a Best Supporting Actor nod without picking up any precursor nominations, missing out at the CCAs, the Globes, and with SAG voters. Had the BAFTA nominations — which also snubbed the London-born actor — been announced prior to the Academy Awards, we all would have been four times as surprised on Oscar morning. Instead, Lindo slipped into the No. 5 spot over Hamnet’s Paul Mescal, who was the surprise snub on our side of the pond last Thursday.
But BAFTA voters went with Mescal, not Lindo, which means the Hollywood veteran is very much on his own island with no chances to pick up any hardware ahead of Oscar night. Even so, our expert prognosticators still give him better odds of winning than either One Battle’s Sean Penn or Frankenstein’s Jacob Elordi, who was the CCAs choice earlier this month. Lindo is currently sitting at No. 3 behind Benicio Del Toro and a resurgent Stellan Skarsgård, who rode the Sentimental Value wave back into first place.
Best Supporting Actor
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Stellan Skarsgård
Sentimental Value
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Benicio Del Toro
One Battle After Another
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Jacob Elordi
Frankenstein
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Sean Penn
One Battle After Another
Huntr/x did miss
We knew it was coming courtesy of the BAFTA longlists, but it was still weird to hear a Best Animated Feature roll call that didn’t include the Netflix sensation, KPop Demon Hunters. Apparently, BAFTA is perfectly golden with the idea of the U.K. being overrun by soda pop-drinking demons. The category instead made room for the trio of Pixar’s Elio, GKIDS’s Little Amélie or the Character of Rain and Disney’s Zootopia 2, all of which are also in Oscar contention.
For the record, that snub hasn’t in any way shaken our Oscar odds for the Huntr/x trio, who continue to lead the competition with a perfect 100 percent approval among experts. Still, there is admittedly some residual Netflix skepticism among Academy voters that may yet lead them in the direction of Zootopia 2 and its mammoth box-office success. We’ll know the British fix is in if Zootopia 2 trumps KPop Demon Hunters and then Zootopia 3 is subtitled Hunt for the Red Grouse.
Best Animated Feature
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Little Amélie or the Character of Rain
Infiniti rising
With One Battle’s Chase Infiniti already out of the Oscar running, she won’t have the opportunity to become the fifth 25-year-old Best Actress winner in Academy Award history after Jennifer Jones, Grace Kelly, Hilary Swank, and Mikey Madison. But the breakout star does still have the chance to make BAFTA history as only the third American performer to win the Rising Star Award, which is voted on by the general public. No U.S. actor has won the prize since Kristen Stewart in 2009, and Shia LaBeouf preceded her win in 2007. (Infiniti is also nominated in the Best Actress category that Buckely is likely to win, while Sinners stunner Miles Caton also has a shot to bring the Rising Star across the pond.)
Furthermore, a surprise Rising Star victory for Infiniti would help bolster One Battle in its endgame battle with Sinners as both films seek to rack up wins heading into Oscar night. Paul Thomas Anderson’s film is still the one-and-only choice among our experts, but combined predictions have Ryan Coogler’s movie approaching the 20 percent mark as the No. 2 spoiler. Talk about a real… chase.
Best Picture
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