Oscar Predictions: Animated Feature — A New and Competitive Era for the Medium That Isn’t Just for Kids

Variety Awards Circuit section is the home for all awards news and related content throughout the year, featuring the following: the official predictions for the upcoming Oscars, Emmys, Grammys and Tony Awards ceremonies, curated by Variety chief awards editor Clayton Davis. The prediction pages reflect the current standings in the race and do not reflect personal preferences for any individual contender. As other formal (and informal) polls suggest, competitions are fluid and subject to change in response to buzz and events. Predictions are updated every Thursday.

Best Animated Feature Predictions Commentary (Updated: Nov. 3, 2026): This year, animated features aren’t just for kids. And that’s a good thing.

Laika’s “Wildwood” is the company’s first PG-13 film in its 17 years as a feature studio. At 130 minutes, it ties the record for the longest English-language animated film ever made. Director and producer Travis Knight is already an Oscar nominee for “Kubo and the Two Strings” and has earned considerable respect from his peers and audiences alike. “Wildwood” is among the year’s most acclaimed films and, despite a less-than-stellar box office performance, currently looks like the one to beat.

Knight was among the filmmakers featured in this year’s Pixels and Pencils panel, Variety’s conversation with animation directors at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival. He was joined by Brad Bird (“Ray Gunn”), Daniel Chong (“Hoppers”), Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado (“Forgotten Island”) and Leah Nelson (“Tangles”), all of whom are also in the animated feature race.

And that’s just the group represented on the panel. Louis Clichy’s “Iron Boy” and Andrew Stanton’s “Toy Story 5” are among the other contenders helping make this one of the category’s most competitive lineups in recent years.

Since “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” won the animated feature Oscar at the 95th Academy Awards, neither Disney nor Pixar has won the trophy. Instead, “The Boy and the Heron,” “Flow” and “KPop Demon Hunters” have taken home the prize, marking a significant shift for a category largely dominated by those two studios since “Shrek” won the inaugural award in 2002.

Then there’s “Tangles,” a film that makes no attempt to disguise its ambitions as an adult story. First-time feature director Leah Nelson co-wrote the film with Sarah Leavitt, adapting Leavitt’s graphic memoir about her mother’s battle with Alzheimer’s disease in the late 1990s. Abbi Jacobson voices Sarah, while Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays her mother. Louis-Dreyfus is also a producer, alongside Seth Rogen and Lauren Miller Rogen.

Both “Tangles” and “Wildwood” are also being submitted in the drama categories at the Golden Globes, where animated films have traditionally defaulted to comedy. It’s technically a matter of category placement, but it also signals something about how these creative teams want their films to be perceived.

Of course, none of this is entirely new. “Persepolis” and “Anomalisa” earned Oscar nominations years ago, and Japanese filmmakers have been making animation for adults for as long as the medium has existed.

Only three animated films — “Beauty and the Beast,” “Up” and “Toy Story 3″ — have ever earned best picture nominations, and the last of those came 15 years ago. In a year where we could find our first documentary feature nominated for best picture (“You Can See Everything”), could an animated film join the lineup, too?

The list of predictions in all categories can be found here.

The Governors Awards, which will hand out honorary Oscars to Glenn Close and Ridley Scott, will take place Sunday, Nov. 15. Preliminary voting for the Oscars shortlist in 12 categories runs Dec. 7-11, with the shortlist announcement to follow Tuesday, Dec. 15. Following the close of the eligibility period on Dec. 31, 2026, nominations voting will run Jan. 11-15, 2027. The official Oscar nominations will be announced on Thursday, Jan. 21, 2027. The 99th Oscars will take place on Sunday, March 14, 2027 and will be hosted by Conan O’Brien. The ceremony airs live at 7 p.m. ET on ABC and in more than 200 territories worldwide from the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood.