The 2026 Oscars 

Written By Brionna Gillis

By Brionna Gillis

Courtesy of The Gold Knight

Hollywood hosted its biggest night of the year with the 2026 Academy Awards this past weekend. 

The 98th annual Academy Awards took place last Sunday at the Los Angeles Dolby Theatre. Hosted by Conan O’Brian, Hollywood's biggest stars came out to celebrate the biggest movies and performances of the year. The night was chalked with festivities, brilliant performances, historic firsts, and emotional acting victories.  

“I feel like everything this year was really good. I feel like this is the first Oscars where nothing felt like it went wrong. The hosting was perfect, the performances were good, and there weren't too many people disagreeing with the jokes that were made. It was really good,” said Lauriana Nadjingar, a fourth-year theatre performance major

The night's biggest match up included the two movie Best Picture race between Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” and Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another,” with “One Battle After Another” taking home the award. Other wins of the night included Michael B Jordan winning Best Actor for his performance in “Sinners”,  Jessie Buckely for Best Actress in “Hamnet” Amy Madigan for Best Supporting Actress for “Weapons”, and Sean Penn for Best Supporting Actor in “One Battle After Another,” per Entertainment Weekly. 

“The competition was very strong. There were some really tough categories all around.  I didn’t like ‘One Battle After Another’ as a movie. It felt like an action movie that fed into racial stereotypes regarding black women and it rubbed me the wrong way that it was written by a white man who’s married to a black woman,” said Sobenna Egwuekwe, a fourth-year English major with a concentration in film. “It felt lazy in comparison to ‘Sinners’ hard work.” 

The ceremony also included landmark recipients, with “One Battle After Another” casting director Cassandra Kulukundis taking the debut Best Casting Oscar, while “Sinners” Autumn Durald Arkapaw became the first woman to win Best Cinematography in Academy Awards History. However, the ceremony did catch a bit of backlash after one of the songwriters for “Kpop Demon Hunters” was cut off in the middle of their acceptance speech for Best Original Song. 

“I just think that was disrespectful as a whole cutting, cutting them off in the middle of their acceptance speech, especially since we have seen white actors be able to go on and on but when it's a person of color their speech gets cut,” said Nadjingar. 

Brionna Gillis

My name is Brionna Gillis. I am a graduating senior, journalism major and political science minor from Baltimore, Maryland. Outside of WHOV-TV Digital Team, I am a part of Campus Plus, Contemporary Composer, NABJ, and one of the Digital Editors for the Title III newsletter, just to name a few. I also served as a writer for the Hampton Script. I enjoy reading, particularly romance and fantasy, writing, and listening to music. My enjoyment of writing comes from its form of being another way of self-expression, I don’t always articulate how I am feeling or what I am thinking in the way that I want to, writing allows me to gather my thoughts and put them down on a page. Writing also allows me to relax and get out any negative thoughts that I have been harboring. I also enjoy writing because it allows me to share stories that people have never heard/seen before. My plan after graduating from Hampton is to become a writer for a newspaper or news station and eventually become an investigative reporter.

Next

Timothee Chalamet Faces Backlash Following Comments About Ballet and Opera