‘F1’ Races Back Into the Oscars with 2026 Best Picture Nod

Apple is officially in the running what could be its second big Oscar win as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences officially announced the nominees for the 98th Academy Awards, with the Brad Pitt-led F1 on the list of those in the running for Best Picture.

The summer blockbuster feature film quickly became Apple’s most successful film project ever, blazing past $500 million in box office receipts in its first five weeks, and ending its theatrical run with a gross of over $600 million that not only put it in the top movies of 2025, but beat out all of Apple’s previous film releases put together, and nearly tripling runner-up Napoleon, which only took in $221 million during its early 2024 run.

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F1 will be up against some stiff competition, joining Bugonia, Frankenstein, Hamnet, Marty Supreme, One Battle After Another, The Secret Agent, Sentimental Value, Sinners, and Train Dreams in vying for Best Picture.

While the Academy jury is still out on which one of these will ultimately walk away with the Oscar, a win for F1 would be like lightning striking a second time for Apple, after its history-making 2022 win for CODA. Despite multiple nominations for films by Netflix and Amazon, it was Apple that became the first and only streaming service to walk away with a Best Picture Oscar at the 94th Academy Awards.

In subsequent years, the Oscars shifted back to more traditional studio releases, including Everything Everywhere All at Once (2023), Oppenheimer (2024), and Anora (2025). However, this could be the year that changes, and depending on which way the Academy winds blow, Apple may end up taking home a second Best Picture Oscar or it may find its record win tied by rival Netflix, which has two films — Frankenstein and Train Dreams in the running this year.

This is actually the fourth time Netflix has had a double year, with a total of ten nominations for Best Picture — and zero wins — since 2019’s Roma. Apple’s CODA beat out another two-film nomination year for Netflix in 2022, when Don’t Look Up and The Power of the Dog were both in the running, the latter of which was considered a lock until CODA surged in the final weeks of voting. A loss this year would bring Netflix up to 12-nil, but many believe that Frankenstein has better-than-even odds thanks to the pedigree of director Guillermo del Toro, who already has a Best Picture award under his belt for The Shape of Water.

On the flip side, Ryan Coogler’s Sinners also broke an all-time record for the most nominations with 16 in total, becoming one of the few films to be nominated in every single technical category. That makes it a serious contender to beat out F1 not only for Best Picture, but for three other Oscars.

Meanwhile, Warner Bros. — which could soon be owned by Netflix — is having a banner year, since it’s not only produced two of the Best Picture nominees, Sinner and One Battle After Another, but it’s also Apple’s theatrical distribution partner for F1.

Apple’s Other Nominations

In addition to its Best Picture nod, F1 is also in the running for Best Visual Effects, Best Film Editing, and Best Sound, where it’s up against some of the same contenders — including Sinners in all three — along with Avatar: Fire and Ash, Jurassic World Rebirth, and The Lost Bus — another Apple film — for Best Visual Effects.

Another Apple Original, Come See Me in the Good Light, has been nominated for Best Documentary Feature film, joining The Alabama Solution, Cutting Through Rocks, Mr. Nobody Against Putin, and The Perfect Neighbor.

The Lost Bus was also released under the Apple banner after debuting at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) on September 5, 2025, followed by a limited theatrical release for Oscar eligibility on September 19 before moving to Apple TV on October 3. Ironically, that echoes Apple’s previous big winner, CODA, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival before being picked up by Apple for theatrical and streaming distribution — and also becoming the first Sundance film to win Best Picture.

By contrast, F1 followed a much more traditional production and theatrical release schedule, opening on June 27 last year in both traditional theatres and IMAX, and getting a second IMAX run on August 8 before landing on premium video on demand (PVOD) services on August 22, Blu-ray on October 7, and finally Apple TV on December 12. That’s the longest big-screen-to-streaming gap we’ve seen yet from Apple, but it lines up with big budget films from other studios, which have been re-lengthening the release windows to draw audiences back into theatres following the global health pandemic.

While shorter-term theatrical releases still technically meet the rules to qualify for Oscars, prominent members of the Academy like Steven Spielberg have spoken out against this policy. F1’s more traditional release could help win over some of those who believe that streaming movies shouldn’t be in the running.

Still, F1 is considered a long shot by many film industry observers. As previous years have shown, the Academy tends to lean toward art more than action when choosing a winner for Best Picture; Oppenheimer was a rare exception that blurred the lines between both. A win for F1 would be historic in more ways than marking a second award for a streaming film; it would also be the first pure sports-action film to take Best Picture in nearly 50 years, following Rocky at the 49th Academy Awards in 1977.

With that track record, it’s not surprising that many expected F1 would only see nominations in a few technical categories, but clearly something about it resonated with enough Academy voters to cross the nomination line. Now we just have to wait and see if it will make it across the finish line.

The 98th Academy Awards will be held on March 15, 2026.