Oscars 2026 Diversity Report: ‘Sinners’ Ties Record for Black Artists

The 98th Academy Awards will be the second year that the Oscars are held under recently added diversity rules that were first unveiled in 2020 as a response to the #OscarsSoWhite outcry that rang through Hollywood more than a decade ago. So has it yielded any results?

Well, some. It certainly helps that this year’s list of contenders is headlined by Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners,” which set a new record for the most nominations in Oscars history with 16. Ten of those nominations went to Black artists, tying the all-time Oscars record set by “Judas and the Black Messiah” (which Coogler produced) in 2021.

And while the overall list continued to skew male in the non-gendered categories and white from top to bottom, there were several notable standouts thanks to films like “Hamnet” and “One Battle After Another,” as well as overseas offerings like “Kokuho” and “Sirât.”

Zhao and Coogler Nominated for Best Director

With her nomination for “Hamnet,” Chloé Zhao became only the second woman to earn multiple Best Director nominations. She joins Jane Campion, who landed her first nomination for “The Piano” in 1994 and won the Oscar for “The Power of the Dog” in 2022.

Zhao, of course, is also a Best Directing Oscar winner, taking the prize in 2021 for the Best Picture-winning “Nomadland,” when she became the first woman of color to take the prize. The only other woman aside from her and Campion to win in this category is Kathyrn Bigelow with “The Hurt Locker” in 2010.

Overall, Zhao’s “Hamnet” nom is only the 11th for a woman in the Best Directing category in the near-century-long history of the Oscars, with six of those nominations coming since 2021. This decade, the only year to have an all-male field in this category is 2023, the year in which “Everything Everywhere All at Once” directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert won over Todd Field, Steven Spielberg, Ruben Ostlund and Martin McDonagh.

Meanwhile, Coogler became just the seventh Black filmmaker to be nominated in this category, joining John Singleton, Lee Daniels, Steve McQueen, Barry Jenkins, Jordan Peele, and Spike Lee. McQueen became the first Black filmmaker to direct a Best Picture winner with “12 Years a Slave” in 2014, with Jenkins following three years later with “Moonlight,” but no Black filmmaker to date has won Best Director and no Black woman director has ever been nominated.

One of the morning’s surprises was the Academy snubbing Mexican auteur Guillermo del Toro in Best Director, for “Frankenstein.”

Six Actors From Underrepresented Communities Nominated

First the bad news: with Cynthia Erivo failing to get a second nomination for her performance as Elphaba in “Wicked: For Good,” the Best Actress nominee list is an all-white field: Jessie Buckley (“Hamnet”), Rose Byrne (“If I Had Legs I’d Kick You”), Renate Reinsve (“Sentimental Value”), Kate Hudson (“Song Sung Blue”) and Emma Stone (“Bugonia”).

Counterbalancing that are four nominations for Black actors, three of them from “Sinners”: Michael B. Jordan for Best Actor, Wunmi Mosaku for Best Supporting Actress, and in a surprise for prognosticators, Delroy Lindo for Best Supporting Actor. After winning supporting actress at the Golden Globes, Teyana Taylor scored an Oscar nod for “One Battle After Another.”

Meanwhile, two Latino actors received nominations. Puerto Rican Benicio del Toro earned his third nomination for “One Battle After Another.” He is one of five actors of Puerto Rican descent to win an Oscar, having done so in 2001 for his supporting role in “Traffic.” Brazilian actor Wagner Moura was also nominated for his lead performance in “The Secret Agent,” becoming the first from his country to be recognized in this category and third Brazilian overall, following Fernanda Torres for last year’s “I’m Still Here” and Fernanda Montenegro for “Central Station” in 1999.

The total of six nominated actors from underrepresented communities is slightly down from last year’s count of seven. The all-time record for most actors of color nominated in a single year came in 2021 with nine, including Daniel Kaluuya, Chadwick Boseman, Steven Yeun, Yuh-Jung Youn and Riz Ahmed.

‘Sinners’ Breaks Ground Below the Line

Ryan Coogler’s commitment to putting Black artists in key below-the-line roles has led to more milestones in several Oscar categories, most notably DP Autumn Durald Arkapaw, who first worked with Coogler on “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” and is now the first woman of color to be nominated for Best Cinematography (and the fourth woman overall).

Ruth E. Carter, who became the first Black winner in the Best Costume Design category with her pair of “Black Panther” wins, earned her fifth nomination for “Sinners,” while production designer Hannah Beachler, the first Black woman to win in her category (also for “Black Panther”), earns her second nomination. Makeup artist Shunika Terry, who created the film’s vampires and the gory aftermaths of their kills, became the sixth Black woman nominated for Best Makeup and Hairstyling, five years after Mia Neal and Jamika Wilson won in the category for “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.”

“Kokuho” Earns Makeup Nod for Japanese Artists

Speaking of Best Makeup, only three Asian artists have ever been nominated in the category until this year: “Bombshell” and “Darkest Hour” winner Kazu Hiro, “The Whale” winner Judy Chin and “House of Gucci” nominee Frederic Aspiras.

While Hiro earned his sixth nomination for transforming Dwayne Johnson into MMA fighter Mark Kerr in “The Smashing Machine,” the Japanese trio of Kyoko Toyokawa, Naomi Hibino and Tadashi Nishimatsu joined this short list for their work on the kabuki drama “Kokuho.”

First All-Female Sound Team

Finally, the Best International Feature nominee “Sirât” has made history thanks to its sound design team of Amanda Villavieja, Laia Casanovas and Yasmina Praderas, who become the first all-female team to be nominated for an Oscar in a sound category. The “Sirat” team is part of a record 74 women nominated this year, beating the previous record of 73 in 2023.

To date, only six women have ever won Oscars in competitive sound categories, the first being sound editor Cecelia Hall in 1991 for “The Hunt for Red October” and the most recent being Michelle Couttolence as part of the team for “Sound of Metal,” the first to win after the Best Sound Mixing and Best Sound Editing categories were merged in 2021. Since that merge, nine women have been nominated for Best Sound, with 2024 being the only year with an all-male field.

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