The 2027 Oscar Calendar: Nominations in January, Ceremony in March, and a Crowded International Race

Photo: Busition, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Awards season is properly underway, so here is the calendar as one early guide gives it. Eligibility closes on December 31, 2026. Nominations are listed for January 21, and the ceremony for March 14, 2027. Dates can shift, so treat these as the working schedule until the Academy confirms them.

Photo: Los Angeles Times, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Best Picture conversation is still crowded. Several outlets name Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey as the frontrunner, with Dune: Part Three, Aaron Sorkin's The Social Reckoning and Amy Adams in Klara and the Sun also in early lists. The Social Reckoning's mixed reviews have since cooled its chances a little. At least one major film, Denzel Washington's Here Comes the Flood, has reportedly moved from 2026 into the 2027 race, which shows how much can still change.

Photo: Benoît Prieur, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

The International Feature race is more interesting to me. Nepal has selected Elephants in the Fog, which won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2026. India has chosen Santosh Davakhar's Marathi film Gondhal from 33 entries. I wrote about Gondhal earlier, and it remains a long shot, but a small film from a regional industry winning a nomination is exactly the kind of story the category exists for.

Photo: Pietro Luca Cassarino, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The fall festivals in Venice, Telluride and Toronto have already begun to shape the field. The Gotham nominations arrived recently and the guild announcements follow in December. Most early predictions will be wrong, which is half the fun.

Photo: Anton Gutmann, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I will keep tracking it here. Which film do you think the season belongs to?