The 99th Oscars Are Sunday, March 14, With Conan O'Brien Back for a Third Year — and the Race Starts Next Sunday
The Academy has published the whole season: Governors Awards on November 15, shortlists December 15, nominations January 21, final voting February 25 to March 4, and the ceremony March 14 at the Dolby Theatre. This year's rulebook also changes the race itself — an actor can now be nominated twice in the same category, and a film can reach the international race by winning at the right festival instead of being chosen by its country.
Awards season has a shape, and the Academy publishes it in advance. The 99th Oscars honour the films of 2026, and everything between now and the Dolby Theatre on Sunday, March 14, 2027 is already dated. Here's the season as the Academy itself has set it out — and the rule changes that alter what the season can produce.
The ceremony is Sunday, March 14, at the Dolby Theatre
Sunday, March 14, 2027, 7 p.m. ET / 4 p.m. PT, Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood, live on ABC and Hulu and in more than 200 territories. Conan O'Brien hosts for the third consecutive year; executive producers Raj Kapoor and Katy Mullan return for a fourth. The Academy has already dated the next one, too: the 100th Oscars fall on Sunday, March 5, 2028.
The calendar, in running order
- Thursday, November 12, 2026 — final submission deadline for general entry categories, animated feature, Best Picture. The last door closes.
- Sunday, November 15, 2026 — the 17th Governors Awards, Ray Dolby Ballroom. Academy Honorary Awards go to actor Glenn Close, animator Floyd Norman and director Ridley Scott; the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award goes to producers Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler of Killer Films. This is the season's first room — the night the year's honorary statues are handed over, nine days from now.
- December 7–11, 2026 — preliminary voting.
- Tuesday, December 15, 2026 — the shortlists: the long fields cut to their final pools in the shortlist categories.
- January 8–10, 2027 — the bake-offs: nominating screenings for Casting, Makeup and Hairstyling, Sound and Visual Effects.
- January 11–15, 2027 — nominations voting.
- Thursday, January 21, 2027 — nominations announced.
- Tuesday, February 16, 2027 — the Nominees Luncheon.
- February 25 – March 4, 2027 — final voting.
- Sunday, March 14, 2027 — the 99th Oscars.
- Tuesday, April 20, 2027 — the Scientific and Technical Awards, the season's tail.
Two smaller official fixtures worth a line each: the 53rd Student Academy Awards were held in September at the Toronto festival — the first time the ceremony has sat inside TIFF — and the 99th's official Social Media Ambassador and red-carpet correspondent is digital creator Reece Feldman, who will cover the road from the Governors Awards onward.
What the new rulebook changes
The Academy's rules release for the 99th (May 1, 2026) makes several changes that will show up in the season's stories:
- An actor can now be nominated twice in the same acting category — if both performances finish in the top five votes, both are nominated. Acting previously couldn't do what the other categories already allowed.
- International Feature gets a second door. A non-English-language film can now qualify by winning a specified top prize at a listed festival — the Golden Bear at Berlin, the Palme d'Or at Cannes, the Golden Lion at Venice, the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, the Platform Award at Toronto, or Best Film at Busan — instead of only by being its country's official selection. And the nominee is now the film, not the country; the director accepts, with their name on the statuette plaque.
- Best Casting, in its second year, gets a third statuette — the maximum awarded in the category rises from two to three.
- Cinematography's preliminary vote now produces a fixed shortlist of 20.
- On AI, the lines are drawn around people. Only roles demonstrably performed by humans, with their consent, are eligible for acting honours; screenplays are now codified as having to be human-authored; and the Academy reserves the right to demand information about AI use and human authorship on any entry. Visual Effects voters, separately, must actually watch the bake-off before-and-after reels before voting in the final round.
- Housekeeping, for completeness: pre-nomination screenings may now run with two Q&A moderators instead of one, and FYC invitations must carry an accessibility contact. No category was added for the 99th, and none was removed.
This desk's coverage follows the calendar above: the Governors Awards room next Sunday, the shortlists in December, and a nominations-morning piece on January 21 — with the preferential-ballot explainer, linked below, as the standing answer to how Best Picture is actually counted.
Sources
- Academy, "Academy and ABC announce show dates for 99th and 100th Oscars" (Apr. 7, 2026) — the ceremony dates and the key-dates table. http://press.oscars.org/news/academy-and-abc-announce-show-dates-99th-and-100th-oscarsr — opened in full in run-4 research.
- Academy key-dates page, 99th Oscars — the full milestone list reproduced above. https://www.oscars.org/99th-oscars-and-academy-key-dates — opened in full.
- Academy, host/producers release (May 12, 2026) — O'Brien's third year, Kapoor and Mullan's fourth, the 7 p.m. ET start, the 100th Oscars date. http://press.oscars.org/news/99th-oscarsr-reunites-host-conan-obrien-and-executive-producers-raj-kapoor-and-katy-mullan — opened in full.
- Academy, Governors Awards release — the November 15 date, Close/Norman/Scott, Vachon & Koffler, the award definitions. https://press.oscars.org/news/academy-honor-glenn-close-floyd-norman-ridley-scott-and-christine-vachon-pamela-koffler-2026 — opened in full.
- Academy, "Awards Rules and Campaign Promotional Regulations Approved for 99th Oscars" (May 1, 2026) — every rule change in the piece: same-category multiple nominations, human-performance eligibility, Casting's third statuette, the cinematography 20, the International Feature festival pathway and film-as-nominee, human-authored screenplays, the AI information right, the VFX reel requirement, campaign changes. https://press.oscars.org/news/awards-rules-and-campaign-promotional-regulations-approved-99th-oscarsr — opened in full.
- Academy, Student Academy Awards and Social Media Ambassador releases — the TIFF Lightbox ceremony and Reece Feldman's appointment. https://press.oscars.org/news/academy-reveals-2026-student-academy-awardr-winners · https://press.oscars.org/news/reece-feldman-tapped-academys-official-social-media-ambassador-and-red-carpet-correspondent — opened in full.
- Note: the two Academy releases give different membership figures in their boilerplate ("more than 10,500" vs "more than 11,000"); this piece prints neither. The "24 categories" total sometimes quoted for the 99th is not stated in the rules release and is not printed here.
Next in this issue · HollywoodGolden Globes Nominations Are Announced Monday, December 7 at 5 A.M. Pacific — and This Year Every Entry Had to Disclose Its AI →
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