Paul Thomas Anderson’s political thriller-comedy One Battle After Another emerged as the biggest winner at the 98th Academy Awards, taking home six Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director. The ceremony, held at the Dolby Theatre, saw the film triumph in a competitive awards season finale, beating out the record-setting nominee Sinners .
The film, inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland, follows a pot-addled ex-revolutionary played by Leonardo DiCaprio locked in a battle of wits with Colonel Lockjaw, portrayed by Sean Penn . One Battle After Another also won Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing, and the inaugural Best Casting award for Cassandra Kulukundis . Reflecting on her decade-long collaboration with Anderson, Kulukundis said backstage, “It’s our 10th movie, and the collaboration changes on every movie… One Battle in a lot of ways combined all that, everything that we’ve ever thought, said, seen together” .
For Anderson, a critically acclaimed auteur with 11 previous nominations for films like There Will Be Blood and Boogie Nights, the night marked his first-ever competitive wins. “You make a guy work really hard for one of these,” he joked while accepting the Best Director award . In his acceptance speech for Best Picture, Anderson struck a more personal and somber tone, saying he wrote the film for his children, apologizing for “the chaos we leave behind” and expressing hope that younger generations restore “common sense and decency.”
Sean Penn secured Best Supporting Actor for his role as Colonel Lockjaw, a calculating strategist whose decades in political movements give him influence and scars . The win marks Penn’s third Academy Award, making him only the fourth actor ever to win three acting Oscars . However, in a move characteristic of the iconoclastic actor, Penn opted not to attend the ceremony. “He couldn’t be here tonight, or he didn’t want to,” quipped presenter Kieran Culkin upon announcing the winner .
Another major winner of the night was Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, a blues-inspired vampire drama examining America’s racial history . The film entered the night with a record-setting 16 nominations and claimed four awards . Michael B. Jordan won Best Actor for his dual role as twin brothers Smoke and Stack, a performance for which he kept detailed journals to convey the nuances between the two characters . In a historic moment, cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw became the first woman to win the Oscar for Best Cinematography for her work on the film . “A lot of little girls that look like me will sleep really well tonight because they want to become cinematographers,” she said backstage . Sinners also earned Best Original Screenplay for Coogler and Best Original Score for Ludwig Göransson .
Jessie Buckley won Best Actress for the Shakespearean drama Hamnet, her first Academy Award. The Irish actress, who had already swept the four major precursor awards (Golden Globe, Critics Choice, BAFTA, and Actor Awards), dedicated her win to “the beautiful chaos of motherhood” on Mother’s Day in Ireland and the UK . Elsewhere in the acting categories, veteran actor Amy Madigan won Best Supporting Actress for her role as a witch in the horror film Weapons .
Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein dominated several technical categories, winning Best Costume Design, Best Production Design, and Best Makeup and Hairstyling . While del Toro himself did not win personal awards this year, the film’s three wins made it the third-most decorated of the night .
The animated sensation KPop Demon Hunters won both of its nominations, including Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song for “Golden.” The song’s performance at the ceremony, complete with swaying lightsticks, marked the first time a K-pop song has received an Oscar . An emotional Ejae, one of the singers behind the track, accepted the award, reflecting on how K-pop culture has gone mainstream: “Growing up, people made fun of me for liking K-pop. But now everyone’s singing our song and all the Korean lyrics, I’m so proud” .
Other notable winners included Norway’s Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value for Best International Feature, a win that prompted Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store to invite the team to celebrate at his home . The documentary Mr Nobody Against Putin won for Best Documentary, while the live-action short category saw a rare tie—the first in 14 years—between The Singers and Two People Exchanging Saliva .
The 2026 ceremony, hosted by Conan O’Brien, blended artistic achievements with subtle political undertones. While the show was largely apolitical, actor Javier Bardem shouted “Free Palestine” and “No to war” while presenting an award . O’Brien kept the mood lively with satirical jabs, including a quip about an “alternate Oscars being hosted by Kid Rock” aimed at allies of Donald Trump .
The evening also featured poignant tributes in the In Memoriam segment, honoring the late Rob Reiner and Robert Redford, with Barbra Streisand performing onstage and reflecting on her longtime friendship with Redford, whom she called “an intellectual cowboy who blazed his own trail” .
Overall, the night belonged to Paul Thomas Anderson, whose long-awaited Oscar triumph marked a major milestone in a celebrated career, while the success of films like Sinners and KPop Demon Hunters signaled the Academy’s evolving embrace of diverse genres and global cultural phenomena.
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