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.
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
