The 98th Academy Awards were the cinematic equivalent of a very expensive group chat: chaotic, heartfelt, occasionally messy, and absolutely packed with receipts. Hosted by Conan O’Brien at the Dolby Theatre on March 15, the show served up historic wins, a rare tie, political mic drops, and more nostalgia than a Sunday night rewatch queue.
If you did not have four hours to spare but still want to sound fully briefed on the 2026 Oscars’ best moments at work this morning, consider this your cheat sheet. Here are the 10 unmissable beats everyone is still dissecting.
Top 10 Moments From the 2026 Oscars:
1. One Battle After Another Finally Conquers The Academy
After decades of flirtation with Oscar glory, Paul Thomas Anderson finally cashed in. His sprawling saga One Battle After Another went six for 13, taking Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Editing, the inaugural Casting Director Oscar, and Supporting Actor for a very absent Sean Penn. On stage, the mood was more house party than prestige ceremony: producer Sara Murphy’s voice shook, PTA joked that the Academy had really made him “work hard for one of these,” and star Teyana Taylor celebrated by briefly putting her director in a playful headlock. His closing line, inviting everyone to “have a martini,” felt like permission granted.
2. Sinners Becomes the Night’s Spiritual Center
Sinners did not take Best Picture, but it did everything else short of walking on water. With a record 16 nominations, Ryan Coogler’s allegorical vampire epic was the gravitational pull of the ceremony. Coogler finally picked up his first Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, calming a standing ovation so he could thank his wife Zinzi, their children, and the collaborators who turned his script into an instant classic. Later, composer Ludwig Göransson called him “one of the best storytellers of our time” while collecting Best Score. Whether it was the film’s dominance on the ballot or the roar that greeted every mention of its name, Sinners felt like the movie the room was secretly orbiting.
3. Michael B. Jordan and Jessie Buckley Turn Wins Into Family Love Letters
The lead acting categories delivered two of the most purely emotional speeches of the night. Michael B. Jordan, winning Best Actor for his role in Sinners, took a long beat to soak in his standing ovation before opening with “God is good” and shouting out his mom, his dad, who flew in from Ghana, his siblings, and Ryan Coogler, the friend who “gave me the space to be seen.” He namechecked a lineage of Black Oscar royalty from Sidney Poitier to Halle Berry, promising to “keep stepping up” because people kept betting on him.
Minutes later, Jessie Buckley claimed Best Actress for Hamnet, giggling her way through the shock as she became the first Irish woman to win the category. On Mother’s Day in the U.K., she dedicated the statuette to the “beautiful chaos of a mother’s heart,” told husband Fred she wanted “20,000 more babies” with him, and sent a sleepy love note to their eight-month-old, who was almost certainly dreaming of milk rather than Oscars.
4. Autumn Durald Arkapaw Rewrites Cinematography History
If you felt the Dolby shake, it was every woman in Hollywood cheering at once. Sinners cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw became the first woman to win Best Cinematography, only the third ever nominated, and the first woman of color and first Black person to take the prize. Visibly overwhelmed, she asked all the women in the room to stand, insisting she did not get there without them. Ryan Coogler literally carried her young son over so he could watch her speech. It was one of those rare Oscars moments that felt instantly like a new chapter in the rule book.
5. A Live Action Short Tie Turns Into Live Television Chaos
You wait more than a decade for an Oscars tie, and then the show nearly fumbles it. In the Live Action Short category, Kumail Nanjiani opened the envelope, blinked, and announced that The Singers and Two People Exchanging Saliva had both won, marking only the seventh tie in Academy history. His dry plan to bring each team up separately was working beautifully until the second group started speaking, and the production tried to wrap them like a late-night bit. The lights dimmed, the mic began to sink into the stage, the crowd groaned, and Conan was forced to call out the chaos before cameras cut back. Rare Oscar tie, classic live TV mess.
6. KPop Demon Hunters and “Golden” Make Korean Oscars History
Animation and music categories rarely feel seismic, but KPop Demon Hunters shifted the ground. The film took Best Animated Feature, while its earworm anthem “Golden” won Best Original Song, making director Maggie Kang the first filmmaker of South Korean descent to win in the animation category and several of the track’s writers the first South Koreans to win Original Song. On stage, Kang dedicated the win “to Korea and Koreans everywhere,” apologizing that it had taken this long for a film like this to exist, while Ejae spoke about being mocked for loving K-pop as a kid and now hearing the world sing in Korean. Their performance bathed the Dolby in gold light; their earlier acceptance getting chopped to commercial only made the victories feel more defiant.
7. Amy Madigan Reminds Everyone Why We Love an Oscars Veteran
Seventy-five-year-old Amy Madigan winning Best Supporting Actress for her delightfully unhinged Aunt Gladys in Weapons would have been satisfying enough. Her speech turned it into appointment television. Laughing that journalists kept reminding her it had been forty years since her first nomination, she explained she had practiced in the shower while shaving her legs, then pointed out she was wearing pants and did not need to bother. Admitting she was “flummoxed” as her legs shook, she thanked fellow nominees before landing on the most important credit of the night: “my Ed,” husband Ed Harris, who greeted her back at their seats with a kiss once he realized she had, in fact, just become an Oscar winner.
8. In Memoriam and Documentaries Give The Night A Conscience
This year’s extended In Memoriam was a gut punch wrapped in a love letter to cinema. Billy Crystal saluted his old friend Rob Reiner, not only for the films but for the fight he and Michele Reiner waged for marriage equality in the US. Rachel McAdams, close to tears, honored Diane Keaton and Catherine O’Hara. Then Barbra Streisand walked on, spoke movingly about Robert Redford as an “intellectual cowboy,” and eased into the closing bars of “The Way We Were,” turning the Dolby into a collective exhale.
The documentary winners doubled down on that seriousness. All the Empty Rooms, about bedrooms left untouched after children are killed in school shootings, won doc short and invited Uvalde mother Gloria Cazares to the mic. She spoke of her nine-year-old daughter Jackie as “more than a headline,” and reminded the room that gun violence is now the leading cause of death for kids and teens in America. Mr Nobody Against Putin took doc feature, with filmmakers warning about “small acts of complicity,” oligarchs owning media, and insisting that even a nobody is more powerful than they think. Later, presenting International Feature, Javier Bardem added, “No to war. And free Palestine,” while winner Joachim Trier said all adults are responsible for all children and urged voters to remember that. For a show that often tiptoes around politics, it was a clear line in the sand.
9. Conan O’Brien Hosts Like He Knows He Might Be The Last Human To Do It
Conan arrived in character, literally. Dressed as Aunt Gladys from Weapons, he sprinted through lovingly recreated sets from F1, Marty Supreme, Hamnet, One Battle After Another, KPop Demon Hunters, Sinners, and Sentimental Value before emerging, wig off, on the Oscars stage. His monologue mixed cheap shots at Timothée Chalamet’s anti-opera comments with a surprisingly earnest reflection on how films from 31 countries could model collaboration and optimism in what he called frightening times. Later, he dubbed himself the “last human host of the Academy Awards” and left “Conan O’Brien Moderately Happy Meal” snack boxes on every seat. Depending on your patience for sketch comedy, there was either far too much Conan or just enough to keep the night from sinking under its own solemnity.
10. Nostalgia Reunions Feed Every Fandom
If the ceremony had a secret theme, it was comfort TV for film girls. Anne Hathaway walked out with Anna Wintour in a living, breathing Devil Wears Prada meme, complete with sunglasses and a chilly “Thank you, Emily.” The original Bridesmaids crew reunited to present Best Score, riffing on how well or badly they had aged and reading fake notes supposedly from Leonardo DiCaprio and Stellan Skarsgård. Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans traded penguin suits for superhero armor as they assembled to present together, while Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor slipped straight back into Moulin Rouge! mode, trading lyrics about love before singing a fragment of “All You Need Is Love” on their way to crowning Best Picture. Add a Grogu cameo cuddling up to Kate Hudson in the audience, and you had a ceremony custom built to live forever in GIF form.
