How Oscar Nominations Morning Works: What to Know

Oscar nominations are decided by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' membership of roughly 10,000 film professionals, using a preferential ballot counted by PricewaterhouseCoopers, and announced live from Los Angeles in a televised early-morning event each January. The 97th Academy Awards nominations were announced January 23, 2025 — after a delay caused by the Los Angeles wildfires — ahead of the March 2, 2025 ceremony. This explainer covers how the process works and how to read the annual list; details current as of February 2026.

Who Votes for the Oscar Nominations?

The Academy's members are organized into branches — actors, directors, writers, cinematographers, editors, and so on — plus a general members' group. Most categories are nominated only by their own branch: directors nominate directors, editors nominate editors. Best Picture is the exception, where the entire membership votes on the final list of nominees. Membership is by invitation, sponsored and reviewed within branches, and the Academy's drive to diversify after 2016 roughly doubled the eligible voter rolls over the following decade; the Academy has publicly reported crossing 10,000 members in recent years. Voters watch eligible films on members' screeners and at official screenings through the fall and early winter.

How Does the Preferential Ballot Work?

Nominations use a preferential — ranked — system, which matters because it rewards films with broad support over polarizing ones. In branch categories, voters rank up to five candidates; ballots are sorted and re-sorted by first choices until a vote-count threshold produces five nominees. Best Picture additionally runs on expanded-ballot rules: since 2009 the category can hold between five and ten nominees — set at a fixed ten since 2021 — chosen by a points system where each Best Picture ballot's top choice earns the most weight. The same preferential logic applies to the final winners, meaning a film ranked second or third on many ballots can defeat a film ranked first on fewer. It is why "consensus hit" is a technical description, not a metaphor.

What Happens on Nominations Morning?

The announcement follows a fixed ritual. PwC partners oversee the count off-site under strict secrecy. At the Academy's Los Angeles headquarters — traditionally the Samuel Goldwyn Theater — pairs of presenters read the nominees live at roughly 5:30 a.m. Pacific, a time chosen to hit East Coast morning broadcasts. The full list goes to the Academy's site immediately after. For the 97th awards, the January 2025 announcement was postponed twice as wildfires disrupted Los Angeles and the Academy extended its voting window — per AP's coverage at the time, the first such delay since 2021's pandemic-adjusted calendar. Nominations morning also resets the awards economy: campaigns, trades, and bookmakers reprice within hours.

How Are Films Even Eligible?

• A qualifying theatrical run of at least seven consecutive days in Los Angeles County, with defined screening and premiere-date windows.
• Best Picture additionally requires submission of a confidential Representation and Inclusion Standards form under the Academy's inclusion standards framework (compliance becomes mandatory for the 96th awards onward).
• Category-specific rules: International Feature entries are submitted one per country; Documentary and Short categories have their own panels and shortlists.
• Branch executive committees rule on eligibility disputes before ballots go out.

What Happens Between Nominations and the Ceremony?

The roughly six weeks between nominations morning and the ceremony are the industry's campaign season. Studios schedule increased screenings, Q&A appearances, and luncheons; the nominees' class photo at the annual Academy luncheon is a fixture of the period. Voting for the winners opens a few weeks before the ceremony and runs about a week, with final ballots again counted by PwC under its long-standing secrecy procedures — the firm has handled the count since 1935.

The calendar has shifted over the years, and the shifts matter. The ceremony moved to late February and then, from 2004, to late February-early March; the pandemic year 2021 pushed it to April, the latest date in its history. Nomination announcements have landed anywhere from early to late January depending on the year's voting schedule. For the 97th awards in 2025, the wildfires that delayed the nomination announcement also curtailed campaign events, and the ceremony itself, March 2, opened with a tribute to the city — details per AP's coverage of the season.

For viewers, the practical takeaway is timing: nominations morning tells you which films will be re-released or newly available on platforms over the following weeks, as distributors capitalize on the attention. Watching the list is partly an act of calendar planning — the nominated films you have not yet seen tend to be the easiest to see in the six weeks that follow.

How Should You Read the Nominations List?

A few patterns recur. Best Picture nominees correlate strongly with the producers', directors', and actors' guild nominations announced earlier in January, because those bodies overlap the Academy's branches. snubs — critically loved titles missing entirely — usually trace back to the preferential math: passionate minority support loses to broad second-place rankings. Category counts matter: a film nominated for Best Picture, Director, Editing, and Screenplay has historically been positioned as a frontrunner, since Editing in particular tracks the eventual winner more often than not. And totals fluctuate: for reference, The Brutalist and Wicked each entered the March 2, 2025 ceremony with ten nominations, while Anora won five awards from six. Treat all of it as data about the industry's mood — the awards are the opinion of one specific body of roughly 10,000 voters, and Red Orb News covers them as record, not endorsement.