The 2026 BAFTA Film Awards did plenty to pump up One Battle After Another‘s bona fides — as if the film needed it — with Paul Thomas Anderson’s juggernaut racking up a half-dozen trophies, including Best Picture and Best Director, to dominate the evening and tighten its grip on the Academy Awards race.
And One Battle wasn’t the only contender to lock up some Oscars on Sunday. Jessie Buckley continued her dominating march towards Best Actress for Hamnet, as did below-the-liners like Frankenstein (Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup and Hair) and Avatar: Fire and Ash (Best Special Visual Effects). But the biggest buzz coming out of the BAFTAS had less to do with the favorites who won and everything about the jaw-dropping surprises — none more so than Oscar frontrunner Timothée Chalamet losing Best Actor.
Here’s our instant analysis of the BAFTAs and what it portends for the rest of the Oscar race.
Timothee Chalamet suddenly on shaky ground?
Trivia time: In the last 10 years, BAFTA and Oscar voters have only disagreed on the Best Actor of the year once. And that happened at the 2023 BAFTA ceremony, when Austin Butler’s Elvis torpedoed Brendan Fraser in The Whale — one of Fraser’s only major losses that cycle.
Timothée Chalamet and Kylie JennerPhoto by Carlo Paloni/BAFTA via Getty Images
Going into Sunday, we were hoping BAFTA voters would help settle the question of whether or not Chalamet really is too young to win a Best Actor statuette from the Academy. Instead, the Brits punted and went with one of their own in the wildest surprise of the BAFTAs. Robert Aramayo — best known here for playing young Ned Stark on Game of Thrones and Elrond in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power — won for the U.K. film I Swear, a biopic about a young Scottish man with Tourette syndrome who becomes a renowned advocate honored by the queen. Aramayo’s performance wowed his homeland as he was also named Rising Star over the likes of One Battle’s Chase Infiniti and Sinners’ Miles Caton — leaving the Best Actor race less of a certainty.
But I Swear won’t be eligible for the Oscars until 2027, and we still need to figure out the 2026 edition. Chalamet’s loss here might open up a race he has led — and continues to lead per the Gold Derby charts — for months.
Best Actor
1.
Timothée Chalamet
Marty Supreme
2.
Wagner Moura
The Secret Agent
3.
Leonardo DiCaprio
One Battle After Another
4.
Michael B. Jordan
Sinners
5.
In the meantime, the BAFTAs’ prognosticating prowess takes a rare L, and we’ll turn to the Actor Awards on March 1 to see if SAG breaks precedent and gives Chalamet the top acting honor two years in a row — a feat never accomplished before.
Film Actor
1.
Timothée Chalamet
Marty Supreme
2.
Michael B. Jordan
Sinners
3.
4.
Leonardo DiCaprio
One Battle After Another
5.
Best Supporting Actress is not a done deal
Wunmi MosakuStuart Wilson/BAFTA/Getty Images for BAFTA
Wunmi Mosaku’s huge win on Sunday signals that the Oscar supporting race is far from settled. Yes, Mosaku is a British favorite and a previous BAFTA winner who provided the heart and soul of Sinners as hoodoo warrior Annie, but with the across-the-line strength of Ryan Coogler’s vampires at the Oscars — as evidenced by the film’s record nomination haul — Mosaku just established herself as a threat to the presumptive leaders: One Battle After Another’s Teyana Taylor, atop the Gold Derby Oscar odds at 71 percent going into the BAFTAs, and Weapons’ Amy Madigan, No. 2 with 19 percent. (As soon as Mosaku won, the odds began to shift.) If Academy voters tilt towards Sinners, Mosaku could benefit. In any case, her BAFTA victory provides some needed drama for the rest of the race. Whoever gets the SAG endorsement next week will go into the Oscars with the juice.
Best Supporting Actress
1.
Teyana Taylor
One Battle After Another
2.
3.
4.
Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas
Sentimental Value
5.
Elle Fanning
Sentimental Value
Is Sean Penn’s apathy a winning strategy?
Are we sleeping on Sean Penn? The two-time Oscar winner entered awards season with a bang — when One Battle After Another debuted, he immediately soared to the top of the Gold Derby rankings for Best Supporting Actor for playing the screwy, revenge-minded Col. Steven J. Lockjaw. But over the past several months, sentiment shifted in favor of costar Benicio Del Toro, who passed Penn in the odds, and Sentimental Value’s Stellan Skarsgård and Frankenstein’s Jacob Elordi, who traded trophies at the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards. Penn became something of an afterthought. His lack of visibility on the campaign trail decidedly didn’t help. While he popped up for an interview here or there and supported the One Battle cast at some key events, Penn wasn’t working the rooms like his fellow contenders and didn’t seem to care about adding a third statuette to his collection. Heck, he wasn’t even present in London to collect his first-ever BAFTA Award. Who knew that apathy could be a winning strategy? With One Battle the prohibitive Best Picture favorite and the consummate actor’s-actor Penn obviously beloved by the Academy, he clearly remains in play at the Academy Awards — and Sunday’s BAFTA win may show that the best campaign might be none at all. Or maybe it’s just a blip, and a way for Brits to thumb their noses at the current American political landscape. If nothing else, Team Skarsgård has got to be sweating.
Best Supporting Actor
1.
Stellan Skarsgård
Sentimental Value
2.
Sean Penn
One Battle After Another
3.
Jacob Elordi
Frankenstein
4.
5.
Benicio Del Toro
One Battle After Another
Sentimental Value maintains the edge over The Secret Agent
While the Brazilians are an undeniable force, their sway didn’t carry across the pond, where Sentimental Value won the BAFTA for Best Film Not in the English Language over The Secret Agent. The two films might be in the biggest Oscar nail-biter of all, Best International Feature, and Sunday’s victory undoubtedly tips the scales towards Joachim Trier’s family drama.
Sinners helps rewrite BAFTAs ugly race narrative
Sinners came into the BAFTAs with 13 nominations, one fewer than One Battle, and the chance to change perceptions. The British Academy has been excoriated for its historical lack of diversity among winners, prompting #BAFTAsSoWhite and #BAFTAsStillSoWhite backlash in the last decade. As recently as 2023, there were no people of color among the winners. The body has expanded its voting pool to help fix the issue, and there were positive signs on Sunday that the narrative has begun to shift.
Ryan Coogler and Zinzi CooglerJames McCauley/Variety
Sinners captured three awards: In addition to Ludwig Göransson’s expected win for Best Score and Mosaku’s surprise victory, Ryan Coogler became the first Black winner of the BAFTAs’ Best Original Screenplay Award. The award affirms Coogler’s edge in the same category at the Oscars.
But for all its success at the BAFTAs, Sinners did miss out on two key prizes: Best Casting and Best Cinematography. In the former category, Sinners lost out to I Swear. That film was an obvious favorite among British Academy voters and the award acknowledged the casting of the pitch-perfect star Aramayo. Sinners remains in the pole position for the inaugural Best Casting category at the Oscars and the equivalent Best Ensemble at the Actor Awards.
Cinematography, however, was a bigger miss. Sinners’ Autumn Durald Arkapaw, the first woman of color to be nominated in the category at both the BAFTAs and the Academy Awards, is in a tight Oscar contest with Train Dreams DP Adolpho Veloso, per the Gold Derby data. But on Sunday, it was One Battle’s Michael Bauman who emerged with the BAFTA, perhaps signaling a tighter race than imagined. We’ll get some clarity on March 8, when the American Society of Cinematographers unveils their guild winners and tees up the Oscars.