After a relatively tumultuous awards season, with scheduling delays caused by the devastating L.A. wildfires and frontrunners marred by controversy, the 97th Academy Awards have finally arrived. Hosted by Conan O’Brien, the ceremony has the potential for more surprises than last year’s Oppenheimer-dominated night, with a comparatively open Best Picture race and some photo-finish lead acting races between Demi Moore and Fernanda Torres and Adrien Brody and Timothée Chalamet. TIME staffers will be watching live and providing updates and analysis in our live blog.
Follow along for the winners, losers, and biggest moments of Oscar Sunday.
How Anora became an Oscar frontrunner
Following the Emilia Pérez scandal, prognosticators obsessed over which movie might take its place as the most likely movie to win Best Picture. Anora, the film about a stripper who embarks on a whirlwind romance with a young Russian oligarch, initially looked like an Oscar frontrunner after snagging the prestigious Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival last summer. That narrative took a turn when Sean Baker’s latest film got shut out at the Golden Globes.
But Anora recently took the top prizes at several awards shows, including the Producers Guild Awards, which tends to accurately predict the Oscar Best Picture winner. In many ways, Anora fits the mold of recent Best Picture winners like Moonlight, The Shape of Water, Parasite, and Everything Everywhere All At Once. All those movies make daring (and very different) artistic choices but by the end offer a tender moment and clear social statement—in Anora’s case about the illusion of the American dream.—Eliana Dockterman
Who is up for an EGOT tonight
EGOT status is a coveted marker of a legendary career in Hollywood—only bestowed on those who have won all four major entertainment industry awards: an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony. So far, 21 people have earned the right to call themselves EGOTs.
At this year’s Oscars, Cynthia Erivo, nominated for Best Actress for her portrayal of Elphaba Thropp in Wicked, will achieve EGOT status if she wins the award. Erivo won all three other awards for her portrayal of Celie in the 2015 Broadway revival of the musical The Color Purple. If Erivo wins her Oscar, she would be the youngest person to ever achieve EGOT status.—Rebecca Schneid
The history that could be made tonight
Should Emilia Perez’s lead, Karla Sofía Gascón, win the Oscar for the Best Actress she would be the first out trans actor to win an Academy Award.
Colman Domingo also has another chance to make history: if he wins the Oscar for Best Actor for his performance as the leader of an incarcerated theater troupe in Sing Sing, he will become the first Afro-Latino to win the award. Domingo was also up for the award last year for his role as civil rights activist Bayard Rustin in George C. Wolfe’s 2023 biopic Rustin.—Rebecca Schneid
The acting frontrunners
Kieran Culkin has the Best Supporting Actor race locked up for his work in A Real Pain. Culkin has swept the pre-Oscar awards shows, likely due to the fact that his quirky A Real Pain character bears a striking resemblance to the much-loved Roman Roy, who Culkin played on Succession. Zoe Saldaña has similarly dominated awards season. She will likely manage to snag the Best Supporting Actress statue for her work in the polarizing musical Emilia Pérez, despite the fact that that film has been embroiled in controversy after a journalist unearthed a trove of vile tweets from Saldaña’s co-star, Karla Sofía Gascón. Demi Moore is running an effective “it’s about time” campaign for her role in the horror film The Substance—despite her long career, she’s never been nominated for an Oscar before. But Mikey Madison could ride Anora’s recent surge in the race to a victory in that category. Adrien Brody will probably win a second Academy Award for yet another performance as a Holocaust survivor in The Brutalist—he won for The Pianist 2004—but Timothée Chalamet has pulled off a viral press tour that will keep him top-of-mind for voters. If he beats Brody, Chalamet could become the youngest Best Actor winner ever.—Eliana Dockterman
How the LA wildfires impacted the Oscars
The devastating Los Angeles wildfires, which ravaged the city in January, has impacted Hollywood in a number of ways. Workers across the industry have shared how the wildfires impacted them personally: Actors like Billy Crystal and Mandy Moore have spoken up about losing their homes, while others have raised money in support of the many people who might not be household names but are crucial in making Hollywood run.
The fires also affected awards season: the Critics Choice Awards had to be delayed from January 12 to February 7, and the Academy extended its Oscars nominations voting window and postponed the nominations announcement. In a statement, Academy leadership detailed how tonight’s ceremony would reflect on the devastation. “We will honor Los Angeles as the city of dreams, showcasing its beauty and resilience, as well as its role as a beacon for filmmakers and creative visionaries for over a century,” read a letter from Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science CEO Bill Kramer and President Janet Yang. “We will reflect on the recent events while highlighting the strength, creativity, and optimism that defines Los Angeles and our industry.”—Rebecca Schneid
What to know about the presenters
Over the course of the past month, the Academy has announced a slew of names who will be handing out the awards tonight.
The presenters will include actors Selena Gomez, Scarlett Johansson, Willem Dafoe, Sterling K. Brown, Joe Alwyn, Lily-Rose Depp, Goldie Hawn, Ben Stiller, Connie Nielsen, and Ana de Armas, Bowen Yang, Elle Fanning, Whoopi Goldberg, Goldie Hawn, and Oprah Winfrey.—Rebecca Schneid
Our film critic’s favorite 2025 Oscar nominees
There are plenty of people in the business of predicting Oscar winners. But unless you’ve got money in the game—and no judgment if you do—isn’t it more fun just to root for your favorites? That’s what I do every year. I generally view the Oscars with a healthy dose of skepticism: As far as I’m concerned, Academy voters don’t always choose the best films or performances. Sometimes they’re influenced by campaigns, the thinking of their friends, the general mood in the air. And sometimes—sorry—their choices just boil down to bad taste. In the runup to the Oscars, I sternly decree that it’s only my taste that matters, and you should feel the same about yours. To that end, here’s a handful of my favorite nominees this year, including Timothée Chalamet for A Complete Unknown, Yura Borisov for Anora, and Flow.—Stephanie Zacharek
The films with the most amount of nominations tonight
Jacques Audiard’s controversial Emilia Perez—a French-made, Spanish-language musical about a Mexican drug cartel leader—is in front with 13 nominations. Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist—an ambitious three-hour epic about a brilliant architect who emigrates to the United States post-World War II— and John M. Chu’s Wicked—the first part of the beloved Broadway musical’s film adaptation— followed closely behind with 10 nominations each.
Bob-Dylan biopic starring Timothée Chalamet, A Complete Unknown, and Edward Berger’s papal drama, Conclave, both bagged eight nominations, and Sean Baker’s Cinderella story, Anora, garnered six. All six are in the running for Best Picture.—Rebecca Schneid
The most exciting award to watch
This is the rare year with a Best Picture race that’s totally up in the air. Emilia Pérez seemed to be leading the pack after winning Best Picture – Musical or Comedy at the Golden Globes. But scandal beset that film after a journalist uncovered star Karla Sofia Gascón’s history of sending wildly racist tweets.
So what will win? The Brutalist won the Golden Globe for Best Picture – Drama but is a polarizing film that has struggled with its own controversy involving the use of AI. Anora won several recent awards, though naysayers think that dramedy set largely in a strip club might prove too scandalous for some Academy voters. A Complete Unknown checks many of the traditional Oscar boxes: a biopic starring an actor who taught himself a new skill (how to sing) helmed by an oft-nominated director in James Mangold. Conclave is a crowd-pleaser. The Academy employs ranked choice voting, so the real question we should be asking may be: What is the second most popular film among Academy members? It’s anyone’s guess.—Eliana Dockterman
How voting works for the Oscars
According to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Oscars’ 23 categories are voted on by that body’s more than 10,500 members in a democratic process.
In the first round of voting, members vote to narrow down nominations, and oftentimes categories are only voted on by voting members of a specific corresponding branch—the actors branch votes for actor categories, the directors branch votes for director categories, and so on. Some categories may be available to all members. In the final round of the voting process, though, all Academy members can vote in all 23 categories.
Voting occurs in rounds through a secret online ballot tabulated by an independent accounting firm hired by the Academy. Most awards are pretty simple: whatever gets the most votes, wins. For the coveted Best Picture category, though, voting is slightly different. Eligible voters rank the nominees from their favorite to their least favorite, and whichever movie gets 50 percent or more of the votes is the winner. The Academy changed their Best Picture voting to this ranked choice system back in 2009, at the same time they increased the number of nominees in that category to as many as 10 films.
For the 2025 Oscars, preliminary voting ran from Dec. 9, 2024 until Dec. 13, 2024 and nominations voting was supposed to run from Jan. 8, 2025 to Jan. 12, 2025, but was extended to Jan. 17 due to the L.A. wildfires. The final round of voting began on Feb. 11 and ended on Feb. 18, meaning ceremonies that took place later, like the SAG Awards, didn’t impact voters’ choices.—Rebecca Schneid
Conan O’Brien will host tonight
For the first time, Conan O’Brien is hosting the Academy Awards. The comedian is following in the footsteps of fellow late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, who has hosted the Oscars four times, including in 2023 and 2024.
“This is incredible. I’ve been handed an Oscar. I’m an Oscar winner,” O’Brien said in a video posted to the Academy’s X account announcing that the organization had tapped the comedian for the job. Someone off-screen then takes the Oscar from his hands and reminds him that he’s hosting the awards, not winning one. Still, he asked: “Oh, but do I still get to keep the Oscar?”
O’Brien hosted late-night talk shows for more than two decades, winning awards for Late Night with Conan O’Brien, The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien and Conan. The five-time Emmy winner was also a writer for Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons.
O’Brien left late night in 2021, and since then has been hosting his podcast “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend.”
“So I did an independent film at Sundance. I headlined at the Newport Folk Festival. I’m just saying yes to things that I wouldn’t have done before,” he told ABC ahead of his big hosting night. “I’m a black belt in karate now. I’m a licensed neurosurgeon. I mean, there are all these things I’m doing now that I didn’t think I would ever do before.”—Rebecca Schneid
How to watch the Oscars
The 97th Oscars broadcast, like last year’s ceremony, will start a bit earlier than the show used to: 7 p.m. EST/4 p.m. PST. You can watch the Oscars on cable with a local ABC station or stream via Hulu (for the first time), Youtube TV, Fubo TV or AT&T TV.
The red carpet starts earlier, as well, at 3:30 p.m. EST/12:30 p.m. PST, and can be streamed at ABC’s On The Red Carpet’s website, Facebook, and Youtube pages.—Rebecca Schneid
