The 2026 Oscars: 10 fun facts

It's nearly time for one of the most exciting film awards of the year, but how much do you know about the ceremony?

The Academy Awards, often called the Oscars, is in its 98th year of celebrating the best movies, stars and artists of the year.

It takes place in the US at Hollywood's Dolby Theatre on Sunday 15 March.

With the time difference, that means the awards will come through very late on Sunday night - and so Newsround will bring you the results for all the best kids' films of the year on Monday morning.

But before then, let's find out all about the famous awards with 10 things you might not have known about the Oscars.

The Oscars don't just award the best film of the year - there's 24 different categories.

These include awards for the best actor and actress, but also awards like best costume, special effects and script.

The 2026 Oscars also has a brand new category for best casting, which recognises the role of the person who picks actors to play parts in films.

This year, family favourites like Elio, KPop Demon Hunters and Zootopia 2 are up for the award for best animated feature.

They're joined by two French films, Arco, and Little Amélie or the Character of Rain.

The category was first introduced in the 2002 ceremony, when it was won by Shrek.

But animated films have had a long history at the Oscars, with Disney's Beauty and the Beast becoming the first animation to be nominated for the main best picture award in 1992.

Even though they're known as a film awards ceremony, one of the Oscars' categories celebrates the best original songs written for a movie in the past year.

Golden by Huntr/x from KPop Demon Hunters is hoping to scoop the prize this year.

There's also a category for best score, which means the soundtrack that's composed for a film, as well as an award to celebrate the best sound design, which is how filmmakers create and edit the sound to immerse you in the world of the movie.

It's one of the biggest questions, with one of the smallest answers... no one really knows!

The rumour is that they were given the name by Margaret Herrick, who worked for the organisation, after she thought that the trophy statues looked like her Uncle Oscar.

The nickname stuck!

The trophies themselves are made of bronze, just taller than a 30cm school ruler, weighing nearly 4kg.

But there were three years when the awards were made of painted plaster, due to a metal shortage during World War II.

After the war, the Academy allowed the winners to swap them for gold-painted metal ones!

There was also a quick re-making of the trophies after 55 statues were stolen before the 2000 Academy Awards.

52 were found, and the remaining three were remade just in time to be handed out!

Sticking with mistakes, one of the biggest whoopsies came in 2017, where the wrong film was announced as the best picture winner.

The hosts had been given the envelope for the wrong award, and so the team behind the musical La La Land got up and gave their winning speech... before finding out that the winner was actually drama Moonlight.

Those 2017 films might not have been able to share their award, but at the very first Academy Awards, two films won a best picture trophy.

In the 1929 ceremony, there were actually two winning film categories.

The World War I drama Wings won in the 'outstanding picture' category, and the silent film Sunrise won for 'best unique and artistic picture'.

Walt Disney goes down in the record books for the person who has won the most Oscars in history, with a total of 22 trophies.

The person alive today who has won the most Oscars is a visual effects artist called Dennis Muren.

He's won eight of the trophies for working on the effects on some of the Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park films.

How many trophies do you think you'd be able to fit in your home?

Ask the Newmans, the musical family who have been nominated over 90 times, with over 10 wins.

You might have heard some of the songs of Randy Newman, who won best original song for Monsters, Inc and Toy Story 3.

That's him singing "You've got a Friend in Me".