The nominations for the 2026 Bafta Film Awards were unveiled today (January 27). In a quirk of this year’s calendar, they come a week after the Oscar nominations were announced.
The Screen team cast their eye over the Bafta films and gauge the differences in the two lists, how local talent and productions have fared and the records broken by Chloe Zhao and Ryan Coogler.
Longlist hits and misses
The transition from the longlists to the nominations saw some films fall by the wayside while others triumphed. James Vanderbilt’s Nuremberg failed to convert any of its six longlist spots into a nomination, while Jon M Chu’s Wicked: For Good only managed to land two nominations – in make up & hairstyling and in costume – from its eight longlisted categories.
Yorgos Lanthimos’s Bugonia may have lost out on seven nominations from its original 12 but it did still score in several key categories, including best director and leading actress and actor for both Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons.
Elsewhere, Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value was the most successful, picking up a nomination in every category in which it was longlisted, including best film and best director. Sinners only missed out on one nomination from the longlist, in best supporting actor for Delroy Lindo, as the Warner Bros title managed to convert the other 13 spots.
Similarly, Kirk Jones’s I Swear scored five out of six nominations, losing out only in best film, while Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme converted 11 of its 13 longlist spots – best score and a best supporting actress nod for Gwyneth Paltrow being the only outliers.
Mixed year for UK representation, but decent year for Ireland
The “Britishness” of the Baftas does shine through many of the nominations, but there are some notable omissions: There are no UK directors nominated in best film, director, documentary, animated film or children’s and family film.
No UK actress is nominated in the leading actress category, although three are nominated in supporting actress (The Ballad Of Wallis Island’s Carey Mulligan, Hamnet’s Emily Watson and Sinners’ Wunmi Mosaku). I Swear’s Robert Aramayo is the only UK star in leading actor, and his co-star Peter Mullan is the solo UK rep in supporting actor.
Wicked: For Good’s Cynthia Erivo was among the longlisted UK-born talent who were not nominated.
Ireland’s Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal both received nominations for their Hamnet performances, in leading actress and supporting actor respectively.
Hamnet is the best-performing UK-produced film, produced by Liza Marshall’s Hera Pictures and Pippa Harris and Sam Mendes’ Neal Street Productions, with 11 nominations. This is followed by I Swear, from Piers Tempest’s Tempo Productions, and Bugonia, produced by Ireland-UK outfit Element Pictures, both with five.
It is a strong year for Element, which has nine nominations across Bugonia, Pillion and My Father’s Shadow. Ireland’s Big Things Films, founded by Cillian Murphy and Alan Moloney, has also cut through with an outstanding British film nomination for Netflix’s Steve. (The film qualifies in this category as screenwriter Max Porter is British. The film also shot in the UK.)
In the craft categories, UK nominations include Lauren Evans (casting, I Swear), Jerskin Fendrix (original score, Bugonia), Max Richter (original score, Hamnet), Johnny Greenwood (original score,One Battle After Another), Alice Felton (production design, Hamnet), Gareth John (sound, F1), Robert Harrington (special visual effects, F1) and Charlie Noble and David Zaretti with Ireland’s Russell Bowen (special visual effects, The Lost Bus). Ireland is also represented by Richard Baneham (special visual effects, Avatar: Fire And Ash).
Warner Bros, Universal go head-to-head
Warner Bros Discovery is the distributor with the most nominations, totalling 27, thanks largely to One Battle After Another and Sinners, the two most nominated titles.
Universal/Focus Features, which led the distributor list last year, has 24 - significantly up on its Oscars total - helped by Hamnet and The Ballad Of Wallis Island.
Netflix is next up and the lead streamer with 14, including eight for Frankenstein. Three of the five nominees in the documentary section are Netflix films; Apocalypse In The Tropics, Cover-Up and The Perfect Neighbor.
Mubi scored an impressive 13 nominations, with eight for Sentimental Value and two for The Secret Agent, while Marty Supreme earned 11 for Entertainment Film Distributors (EFD), which handled the film’s UK and Ireland release for A24.
Vue Lumière, the foreign-language and independent film distribution arm of Vue, which launched in 2024, secured its first-ever Bafta nomination for Little Amelie.
Oscar comparisons
Today’s nominations show the US and UK film academies are broadly aligned in their tastes, with similar major titles attracting a breadth of support, and some of the categories looking notably similar in the names nominated.
However, there are also plenty of differences across the two sets of nominations, with Ampas showing a more broadly international flavour – for example, in craft categories – and Bafta voters showing more loyalty to UK films.
The increasingly international membership of Ampas was reflected in the Oscar nominations, with films predominantly not in English scoring across best film, director, original screenplay, all four acting categories, animated feature, documentary and several craft categories.
Bafta also has a global membership, but not as broadly international as Ampas. For example, Bafta has nominated six male leading actors all speaking English in their films – and best actor Oscar nominee Wagner Moura (The Secret Agent) was not even on Bafta’s longlist of 10.
Record breakers
The 11 nominations for Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet is the highest number of nominations for a film by a woman in Bafta’s history, ahead of Jane Campion’s The Piano (10), Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker (eight), Campion’s The Power Of The Dog (eight) and Zhao’s Nomadland (seven). However, Zhao was the only woman on the director shortlist. Bafta CEO Jane Millichip and Bafta chair Sara Putt discussed the impact of voting interventions in this category here.
Meanwhile, Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, with 13 nods, becomes the most nominated film by a Black director in Bafta history. The film scored an all-time high 16 Oscar nominations last week.
Finally, Leonardo DiCaprio’s seventh best actor nod for One Battle After Another ties him for the most nominations in the category. Alongside him are Daniel Day-Lewis, Michael Caine, Laurence Olivier, Dustin Hoffman, Jack Lemmon and Peter Finch.
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