Oscars: What to know about the Academy Awards voting rules
The start of the new year means it’s time to get ready for Oscar voting. Members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences have less than a week to catch up on 2024’s best movies before voting for the 2025 Oscars officially begins. How does Oscar voting work? Ahead, everything to know about the Academy’s rules and regulations on picking Oscar nominees and winners.
What are the Oscars?
A great place to start. The Oscars are the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences annual awards ceremony. The first Oscars ceremony was held in 1929. Back then it was just called the Academy Awards. The Academy didn’t start using Oscars officially until 1939.
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Why is the Academy Award called an Oscar?
As they said in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, when legend becomes fact, print the legend. While it’s not exactly known how the Academy Awards became known as the Oscars, the story goes that Academy librarian and eventual executive director Margaret Herrick thought it resembled her Uncle Oscar. That nickname eventually caught on internally, and in 1934, Hollywood columnist Sidney Skolsky used “Oscar” while writing about Katharine Hepburn’s first Best Actress Oscar win.
When are the Oscars?
This season’s Oscars ceremony is set for March 2, 2025. The 2025 Oscar nominations are announced on Friday, Jan. 17, 2025.
Who votes for the Oscars?
There are just over 10,000 members of the Academy with individuals split into 17 branches — including actors (the biggest branch), directors, writers, costume designers, and even publicists. Of those 10,000 members, just under 10,000 end up voting for the Academy Awards. (The members who don’t vote for the Oscars have emeritus status.)
While it is very tempting to look at history to judge how the Academy might feel about a particular current contender, it’s worth noting that the Academy has greatly increased its membership over the last 12 years. A Los Angeles Times report published in 2012 revealed the Academy had about 5,800 members at that time.
How does Oscar voting work?
At the nominations stage, it’s relatively simple. The Academy uses branch voting to select the category nominees. That means actors vote for actors, directors vote for directors, composers vote for composers, and down the line. If an Academy branch doesn’t have a corresponding category, those branch members only vote for Best Picture.
Are they the only people who vote for Best Picture nominees?
Nope! Every Academy member with voting privileges votes for Best Picture.
How are the Oscar nominees chosen?
At the nomination stage, the Academy uses a ranked-choice ballot — or preferential ballot — to select its category nominees. On a ranked-choice ballot, each voter lists their nominees in order of preference. When the ballots are counted, the contenders with the most votes over a 50 percent threshold are selected as nominees. But for those contenders that didn’t hit the 50 percent threshold, the ranked-choice balloting takes effect.
How does the preferential ballot work?
OK, let’s say we were going to rank favorite foods among fish, burgers, chicken nuggets, and salad. The food with the least votes — for these purposes, let’s say it was fish — is eliminated. Any ballot with “fish” listed at No. 1 isn’t thrown out — it simply reverts to the voter’s second choice. That continues until one of the contenders has enough votes to earn a nomination. It’s why conventional wisdom among experts suggests that smaller performances or contenders with passionate support (think Andrea Riseborough in 2023 for To Leslie) are more likely to get nominated than a broad contender without similar enthusiasm (an example being Margot Robbie for Barbie last year).
How does Oscar winner voting work?
It’s different but also the same. First of all, the entire Academy votes for the winners in all categories — that means actors, directors, writers, costume designers, and everyone else votes for Best Actor, etc.
But what about Best Picture?
For Best Picture, the Oscars use the preferential ballot. Academy members rank the Best Picture nominees from one to 10. As a film is eliminated because it lacked the votes needed to cross the 50 percent threshold, ballots on which that film was listed as No. 1 are redistributed to the No. 2 choice. That elimination and redistribution continues until one film hits the 50 percent mark and is crowned the winner.
In essence, the preferential ballot creates a consensus choice, which isn’t necessarily always the best choice.
What are the important dates to know for the Oscars?
Nominations voting begins on Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025, at 9 a.m. PT.
Nominations voting ends on Sunday, Jan. 12, 2025, at 5 p.m. PT.
Oscar Nominations are announced on Friday, Jan. 17, 2025.
Final voting begins on Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2025, at 9 a.m. PT.
Final voting ends on Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2025, at 5 p.m. PT.
The 2025 Oscars take place on Sunday, March 2, 2025.
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