How Oscar voting works: nominations, the preferential ballot and who votes

How Oscar voting works surprises many film fans. Actors nominate actors, editors nominate editors, and then the whole Academy picks the winners. Best Picture is counted with a ranked, preferential ballot rather than a simple majority. This guide covers who votes, each voting round and how the Best Picture count works, with the key dates for the 99th Oscars as of September 2026.

By Editorial Team

The short answer

• Who votes: members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The Academy says it has more than 11,000 members worldwide, organised into 19 branches such as actors, directors, cinematographers and producers.
• Nominations: in most categories, each branch nominates in its own field. All eligible members can nominate for Best Picture.
• Winners: all eligible members can vote in all 24 categories in the final round. Since the 98th Oscars, they must have watched every nominee in a category to vote in it.
• Counting: most categories are won by whoever gets the most votes. Best Picture uses a preferential (ranked-choice) count.
• Security: every round is a secret online ballot, counted by the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), according to the Academy’s voting page.

How Oscar voting works, round by round

The Academy runs up to three rounds of voting each season.

1. Preliminary voting (shortlists)

Twelve categories first produce a shortlist: Animated Short, Casting, Cinematography, Documentary Feature, Documentary Short, International Feature, Live Action Short, Makeup and Hairstyling, Original Score, Original Song, Sound and Visual Effects. Members of the relevant branch vote, and the Academy announces the shortlists by press release.

2. Nominations voting

All 24 categories go through nominations voting. Most are decided by the matching branch, although some are open to members from several branches. Under recent Best Picture rules, members rank up to ten films in order of preference, and the ten films with the most support become the nominees. If a nominee is later ruled ineligible, it is not replaced; the category simply has one fewer nominee.

3. Final voting

In the final round, every eligible member may vote in every category. The rules approved in April 2025 added a condition: members must watch all the nominated films in a category to be eligible to vote in that category.

The preferential ballot for Best Picture

The Best Picture count is the part of how Oscar voting works that confuses people most. In every other category, the nominee with the most votes wins, even without a majority. Best Picture is different. Voters rank the nominees from favourite to least favourite, and PwC counts them in stages, as the Academy’s own explainer describes:

• Round one: ballots are sorted by each voter’s first choice. If a film has more than half of the first-place votes, it wins.
• If not: the film with the fewest first-place votes is eliminated. Its ballots move to each voter’s next-ranked film that is still in the race.
• Repeat: this continues until one film holds more than half of the ballots.

Here is a simplified example, with made-up numbers. Imagine 100 ballots and three films: A gets 40 first-place votes, B gets 35 and C gets 25. No film has a majority, so C is eliminated. If 20 of C’s voters ranked B second and 5 ranked A second, B finishes with 55 and wins, even though A led on first choices.

That is the point of the system. With ten nominees, a film could win a simple plurality with a small slice of first-place votes. The preferential count instead rewards the film that the broadest group of voters rank highly.

Key dates for the 99th Oscars

The Academy has published this calendar for the 2026 awards season. All dates are subject to change.

Sources: Academy key dates release (7 April 2026) and 99th Oscars rules (1 May 2026).

Which films can compete

For the 99th Oscars, a feature needs a qualifying cinema release between 1 January and 31 December 2026. Best Picture has extra requirements. Under recent rules, these include an expanded theatrical run in several US markets and meeting the Academy’s representation and inclusion standards. Streaming-only releases do not qualify.

International Feature works differently: each country’s selection committee submits one film, and from 2027 a top festival prize can also qualify a film. We explain that process in how the Nigeria Oscar entry is chosen.

Who becomes an Academy member

Membership is by invitation. Candidates need sponsorship from two existing members of the branch they would join, NBC Chicago explains, and a new class is invited each year. In June 2026 the Academy invited 529 artists and executives, AP reported, compared with 534 the previous year. If all accept, the Academy will have 11,319 members, 10,338 of them voting members.

Common questions

• Do the public vote? No. Only eligible Academy members vote.
• Do box office results matter? Not directly. Films are judged by members’ votes, not ticket sales (see our guide to box office numbers). Commercial hits can win, but a film like A24’s Primetime is judged on the same ballot as a small independent release.
• Are vote totals published? No. The Academy and PwC do not release vote counts.
• How is this different from the Grammys? Grammy voters are limited to categories where they are peers of the nominees. See our guide to how Grammy voting works.

What to watch

Shortlists arrive on 15 December 2026 and nominations on 21 January 2027. Between those dates, studios campaign heavily, with screenings and events aimed at Academy members. More in our International Entertainment and Movies & TV sections.

Sources

• Academy: Voting procedures (oscars.org)
• Academy: Oscars Voting 101
• Academy: 99th and 100th Oscars dates and key dates (7 April 2026)
• Academy: Rules approved for the 99th Oscars (1 May 2026)
• Academy: Rules approved for the 98th Oscars, including the viewing requirement (21 April 2025)
• Academy: Special rules for Best Picture (97th Awards)
• NBC Chicago: Oscars Best Picture voting explained
• AP: Film academy invites 529 new members (June 2026)

Featured image: Photo: Natecation / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0