Oscars 2026 recap: The biggest winners and best moments

Ryan Coogler won his first Academy Award for best original screenplay for "Sinners."

Coogler called the award “an incredible honor.”

He thanked the cast and crew before giving his wife Zinzi Coogler and their kids a sweet shoutout.

“Zinzi, you the best wife and mom in the world. Every day I get to spend with you is better than the one that came before it,” the director said.

To his children, Coogler said, “When y’all blessed to live a long life and dad becomes just a memory, I want y’all to remember this one thing: I love y’all more than anything.”

Other nominees in the category included "Blue Moon" (Robert Kaplow); "It Was Just an Accident" (written by Jafar Panahi, with script collaborators Nader Saïvar, Shadmehr Rastin, and Mehdi Mahmoudian); "Marty Supreme" (Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie) and "Sentimental Value" (Eskil Vogt and Joachim Trier).

When Sean Penn was announced as the winner for best supporting actor for his performance in "One Battle After Another," some were surprised to not see the actor in attendance.

It's unclear as to why Penn wasn't at the Oscars. Last year's winner for supporting actor, Kieran Culkin, who announced the category, said, "Sean Penn couldn't be here this evening, or didn't want to, so I'll be accepting the award on his behalf."

This past awards season, Penn won the BAFTA for best supporting actor, and the Actor Award for outstanding performance by a male actor in a supporting role, but he did not attend those award shows either.

Paul Thomas Anderson won his first Academy Award with his win for best adapted screenplay for "One Battle After Another."

“I wrote this movie for my kids, to say sorry for the housekeeping mess that we left in this world we're handing off to them,” he said in his acceptance speech, "but also with the encouragement that they will be the generation that hopefully brings us some common sense and decency.”

He also gave a shoutout to his longtime partner, actress Maya Rudolph.

Anderson and Rudolph, who share four children, met at a "Saturday Night Live" after-party over 20 years ago, Rudolph told Town & Country magazine in 2024.

"He said he saw me in a sketch and said, 'That's the girl I'm going to marry,'" Rudolph said of Anderson at the time. "But I don't know. I wasn't there. Maybe he just told me that to be sweet."

Other nominees in the category were Will Tracy ("Bugonia"); Guillermo del Toro ("Frankenstein"); Chloé Zhao and Maggie O'Farrell ("Hamnet"); and Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar ("Train Dreams").

After their winning best animated feature for "KPop Demon Hunters," filmmakers Maggie Kang, Chris Appelhans and Michelle Wong reacted to their historic Oscar win while speaking to press in the Oscars press room.

Kang talked about her love for K-Pop music and having the genre being "beloved by audiences globally just means so much to me."

"It was a real honor to feature all aspects of my culture that I loved," she said. ""It’s just so meaningful as a Korean filmmaker. I just hope to see more films, especially in animation that focuses on different cultures. We really need that."

Read more about "KPop Demon Hunters" Oscar win here.