The Academy's Board of Governors approved new rules and campaign guidelines for next year's awards season/Academy Awards ceremony as well as announced key dates (such as the next Oscars taking place on Sunday, March 15).
-"Academy members must now watch all nominated films in each category to be eligible to vote in the final round for the Oscars." This will be determined ala the screening portal that members have access to, and if a member watched a film in-person, they must fill out a form.
-When it comes to generative AI, the Academy is basically leaving it up to the branches and Academy itself to "judge the achievement, taking into account the degree to which a human was at the heart of the creative authorship" as "the tools neither help nor harm the chances of achieving a nomination."
-Cinematography will now also have a preliminary round of voting to determine a shortlist of 10 - 20 films
-The rules around an Oscar for Casting are now codified. Like other technical categories, the casting directors branch members will be invited to a bake-off presentation and then vote to determine a shortlist of 10 films of which the final nominees will be voted on.
-RIP to "Nominees to be Determined" when it comes to which producers will be credited for Best Picture. Producers have to go through a proof of submission via the Producers Guild by a certain deadline depending on when their movie was released.
-All Academy members who opt in can vote on the Animated Short category, but they must view all 15 shortlisted films to be eligible to vote.
-Regarding International Feature Film, "the eligibility requirement regarding creative control has been updated to be inclusive of filmmakers with refugee or asylum status"
The rest of the announcement was a list of deadlines for various categories and major dates. Notable ones for awards season followers are as follows:
Shortlists Announcement / Tuesday, December 16
Nomination voting begins / Monday, January 12, 2026 at 9 AM PT
Nomination voting ends / Friday, January 16, 2026 at 5 PM PT
Oscar nominations / Thursday, January 22
Oscar Voting begins / Thursday, February 26 at 9 AM PT
Oscar Voting ends / Thursday, March 5 at 5 PM PT
98th Oscars / Sunday, March 15.
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