How the Best Picture is chosen at the Oscars
On Sunday, the 2026 Academy Awards will showcase the past year’s biggest achievements in film. The Oscars also show off a better way to run elections: ranked choice voting (RCV).
Academy voters use RCV to select the night’s most prestigious award: the Best Picture winner. Voters are able to rank their favorite films, 1st through 10th. In a crowded field of ten films, ranked choice voting ensures a majority winner and gives voters more power – if their first choice can’t win, their vote counts for second choice, and so on. Learn more about the voting process in this video:
RCV was first introduced for Best Picture in 2009, when the category was expanded to ten films. Since then, Best Picture voters get a wider range of choices, and the ability to rank their favorite films of the year in order of preference. Gone are the days when a film could win just because other films “split the vote.”
Rather than having a method where… [you’re voting] against something, it was about shifting it to being more about voting in the affirmative, voting for the ones that you love, the ones that you respond to.
– Tom Oyer, former senior vice president of member relations and awards at the Academy
While Sunday’s Best Picture winner will have majority support, keep an eye out for unpredictable races for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress. In strong five-nominee fields, actors could win with just over 20% of the vote – meaning a divisive performance might take home an Oscar, even if most Academy voters prefer another nominee.
In January, we also shared how the Academy uses proportional ranked choice voting to choose a diverse set of nominees for its awards – reflecting the wide range of Academy voters’ views. For instance, among the nominees for Best Picture are arthouse films like Train Dreams and Hamnet, alongside sports blockbuster F1, action-packed One Battle After Another, and science-fiction Frankenstein – films with tones that couldn’t be more different.
The reasons the Academy has embraced RCV – more choice and more representative winners – are the same reasons Americans all over the country have embraced it. Right now, RCV is reaching nearly 14 million voters in dozens of cities, counties, and states; forms of it are also used to select the winners of most major sports awards, like league MVPs and the Heisman Trophy. Across the country, roughly 100 colleges and universities, and dozens of major professional organizations, use it too.
Sign up for the latest news from the ranked choice voting movement, or get involved in your community.
Hungry for even more Oscars content? Check out our webinar with Tom Oyer, who played a critical role in modernizing the Oscars’ voting processes, including expanding the use of proportional RCV. And enjoy the 2026 Academy Awards this weekend!