Ryan Coogler’s Sinners breaks Oscars record with 16 nominations

Sinners makes Oscars history as the Academy announces nominations for the 98th Academy Awards, leading all films with a record 16 nods and surpassing the long-standing 14-nomination mark. The blues-steeped vampire epic, set in 1930s Mississippi and centered on twin brothers Stack and Smoke played by Michael B. Jordan, earned nominations across major categories including Best Picture, Best Director for Ryan Coogler, Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Score and Best Song for "I Lied to You."

The breadth of Sinners' recognition, from creative leadership to music and acting, underscores the film’s genre-blending ambitions and the Academy’s increasing appetite for projects that fuse popular vernaculars with historical settings. One Battle After Another follows with 13 nominations, while Marty Supreme, Frankenstein and Sentimental Value each secured nine. The Best Picture field also includes Bugonia; F1: The Movie; Hamnet; The Secret Agent; Train Dreams; and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You among others.

Major individual nominations highlight both established and emergent figures. Michael B. Jordan receives his first Best Actor nomination for his dual role in Sinners. Timothée Chalamet is a favorite and earns his third Best Actor nod for Marty Supreme. Other Best Actor nominees include Leonardo DiCaprio for One Battle After Another, Ethan Hawke for Blue Moon and Wagner Moura for The Secret Agent. The Best Actress slate features Jessie Buckley for Hamnet, Rose Byrne for If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Kate Hudson for Song Sung Blue, Renate Reinsve for Sentimental Value and Emma Stone for Bugonia, marking Stone’s sixth nomination.

Supporting acting categories reflect the wide distribution of craft recognition. Delroy Lindo is nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Sinners; Jacob Elordi, Sean Penn, Stellan Skarsgård and Benicio del Toro are also among the nominees in that category. Best Supporting Actress nominations include Wunmi Mosaku for Sinners, Elle Fanning and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas for Sentimental Value, Amy Madigan for Weapons and Teyana Taylor for One Battle After Another. The nominations rollout opened with Danielle Brooks and Lewis Pullman presenting the Supporting Actress category.

The Academy introduced a new category for Achievement in Casting, the first addition in 25 years, with Sinners, One Battle After Another, Hamnet, Marty Supreme and The Secret Agent among the nominees. That recognition acknowledges casting as a decisive creative force in shaping ensemble storytelling and signal-boosts a craft long seen as behind the scenes.

Beyond trophies, Sinners represents a series of industry milestones. Coogler is nominated as producer, director and original-screenplay author for the film, becoming the second Black filmmaker to earn those three nominations in the same year after Jordan Peele and only the third director overall to do so. He is the seventh Black director nominated for Best Director, joining a small but growing list of predecessors. Producer Zinzi Coogler is the first Filipino producer nominated for Best Picture and, with Ryan Coogler, forms the first Black married couple nominated together in that category.

The nominations are likely to reshape awards-season momentum, boost the film’s commercial and cultural footprint and deepen conversations about genre, music and representation on Hollywood’s biggest stage. The 98th Academy Awards will be held March 15, 2026, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, hosted by Conan O’Brien and airing on ABC with streaming on Hulu, with Sinners positioned as both a critical favorite and a symbol of shifting industry priorities.