The 2026 Oscars are finally here, with all of the precursors out of the way and voting wrapped up. Of course, there is still time left for some additional prognostication, since the 98th Academy Awards don’t take place until March 15. One of the races with the most buzz is Best Actor, which features plenty of star power and no shortage of drama.
Here is a breakdown of the Best Actor category at the 2026 Oscars, featuring nominees, odds, trends and a prediction for who will win.
Find our predictions for other major 2026 Oscars categories here!
- Best Picture
- Best Actress
- Best Supporting Actor
- Best Supporting Actress
- Best Director
- Best Original Screenplay
- Best Adapted Screenplay
2026 Oscars Best Actor Nominees
Timothée Chalamet earned his third Oscar nomination for playing Marty Mauser in Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme. He also picked up nominations at the Actor Awards, BAFTA Awards, Critics’ Choice Awards and Golden Globes, taking home the hardware at the Critics’ Choice and Globes. At 30 years old, Chalamet would become the second-youngest Best Actor winner ever, should he earn the distinction on Sunday. Richard Dreyfuss and Marlon Brando also won at age 30, while Adrien Brodie won at 29.
Leonardo DiCaprio, meanwhile, is up for his an acting Oscar for the seventh time thanks to his performance as Bob Ferguson in Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another. He previously won for The Revenant back in 2016. Although DiCaprio was nominated earlier this year at the Actor Awards, BAFTA Awards Critics’ Choice Awards and Golden Globes, he did not capture any of those honors. DiCaprio is looking to join Brando, Brodie, Gary Cooper, Daniel Day-Lewis Tom Hanks, Dustin Hoffman, Anthony Hopkins, Fredric March, Jack Nicholson, Sean Penn and Spencer Tracy as the 11th person to win multiple Best Actor Oscars.
Ethan Hawke is a two-time Best Supporting Actor nominee – for Training Day and Boyhood – as well as a two-time Best Adapted Screenplay nominee – for Before Sunset and Before Midnight. Now, following his turn as Lorenz Hart in Blue Moon, Hawke has finally earned a nomination as a leading man. Hawke was up for Best Actor at the Actor Awards, BAFTA Awards Critics’ Choice Awards and Golden Globes, but did not win any of them.
Michael B. Jordan is a first-time nominee, and not just in the Best Actor category. In Sinners, Jordan plays identical twins, Smoke and Stack. Jordan had collaborated with director Ryan Coogler before in Fruitvale Station, Creed and Black Panther, the latter of which was a Best Picture nominee back in 2019. Jordan has a chance to become the sixth Black winner in the history of Best Actor at the Oscars, which would put him in a club with Sidney Poitier, Denzel Washington, Jamie Foxx, Forest Whitaker and Will Smith. The 39-year-old is fresh off a win at the Actor Awards, although he came up short at the BAFTAs, Critics’ Choice and Globes.
Wagner Moura has also earned the first Oscar nomination of his career. The star of Brazilian period thriller The Secret Agent won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Drama, with Chalamet winning in the Musical or Comedy category. However, Moura was not nominated at the BAFTA Awards or Actor Awards. I’m Still Here became the first Brazilian-produced film to win an Academy Award when it won Best International Feature in 2025, but non-English language Best Actor nominees are still just 1-for-11 all-time. Italian Roberto Benigni’s win for Life Is Beautiful in 1998 is the lone outlier.
2026 Oscars Odds, Favorites
- Michael B. Jordan, Sinners (-200)
- Timothée Chalamet, Marty Supreme (+170)
- Leonardo DiCaprio, One Battle After Another (+1200)
- Wagner Moura, The Secret Agent (+1600)
- Ethan Hawke, Blue Moon (+3000)
Odds via DraftKings Sportsbook
Who will win Best Actor at the 2026 Oscars?
For most of this race, Chalamet has been the favorite to win Best Actor. That has flipped in recent weeks, though, for some viable reasons and some odd ones.
Jordan’s win at the Actor Awards shows he has support from the Actors branch of the Academy. However, only a fraction of SAG-AFTRA voters are also Oscar voters, so the outcome for that award isn’t completely predictive of what comes next. Chalamet won Best Actor from the guild last year, for instance, only for Brodie to beat him out at the Oscars. Chadwick Boseman also won posthumously at SAG in 2020 before Anthony Hopkins swooped in to win the Oscar. Casey Affleck won in 2016, despite Denzel Washington winning at SAG that same year. The SAG winner has gone on to win at the Oscars 24 out of 31 times, so it isn’t exactly bulletproof.
There is widespread support for Sinners – seen in its record-breaking 16 Oscar nominations – but I don’t see Jordan necessarily being the one to reap the rewards of that support. And when it comes to the other nominees, the juice for Moura seemed to die down after the Golden Globes, Hawke hasn’t been much beyond a critical darling and DiCaprio has come up empty everywhere else.
Where does that lead us? Back to Chalamet.
Chalamet is on the younger end for a Best Actor contender, obviously, but he has aged out of historical outlier territory. And for all the hand-wringing about his comments on opera and ballet, it’s hard to remember sometimes that the internet can be a bubble. Plus, that viral clip was largely taken out of context and the online uproar broke out on the final day of Oscar voting anyways. After falling short for Call Me By Your Name and A Complete Unknown – not to mention his Academy-overlooked performances in the Dune movies – now is the time for Chalamet to secure his statuette. He was the favorite through most of awards season, and I’m not letting a lone precursor or a terminally-online pseudo-controversy sway me.
