Oscars 2026 Recap: ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Scores Twice, Rocks The House; NFB Does It Again; Cursed Conan; And ‘Avatar’ Wins VFX

The 98th Academy Awards delivered one of the more animation-friendly Oscar nights in recent memory. There were awkward moments, but they didn’t seem as dismissive assome more memorable gaffs from years past. Awards presenters implying that voice-acting work is a fallback for failed live-action performers, and acceptance speeches getting cut short, couldn’t mar what was, on the whole, a celebratory atmosphere, with animation celebrated throughout the ceremony in ways both expected and surprising.

There was also this cursed cold open cameo by an animated Conan O’Brien costumed as Aunt Gladys from the 2025 horror flick Weapons interacting with KPop Demon Hunters’s HUNTR/X girls.

KPop Demon Hunters scored the evening’s biggest animation headline when Netflix and Sony’s breakout musical feature took the Oscar for best animated feature, capping an awards-season run that steadily built momentum from critics groups to the guild circuit and finally to the Academy. The film’s victory gives Netflix its second win in the category in the last four years and reinforces a recent trend of celebrating original storytelling in animation over franchise fare.

You’d have to go back to 2019 for the last time a franchise film won the prize, and among the winners since, only Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio in 2022 was based on an existing property. Sequels, prequels, and reboots may bring in the big bucks at the box office, but original stories appear to be what move voters.

This was also the fourth year in a row that Disney didn’t top the category it once so powerfully dominated, although Zootopia 2 was surely a game competitor. The last Disney film to score the animated feature Academy Award was 2021’s Encanto, directed by Z2’s helmers, Jared Bush and Byron Howard, who were almost certainly the runners-up this year with their $1.86 billion behemoth Zootopia 2.

KPop Demon Hunters’ gilded evening also extended into the original song category, where “Golden” topped a crowded field. Featuring music and lyrics by EJAE, Mark Sonnenblick, Joong Gyu Kwak, Yu Han Lee, Hee Dong Nam, Jeong Hoon Seo, and Teddy Park, the song, much like the film itself, has become a global phenomenon. It was the ninth K-pop track to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and the first by female performers to do so, a milestone that capped a remarkable crossover run. The single spent multiple weeks atop global streaming charts, racked up hundreds of millions of streams in a matter of months, and became a fixture on TikTok and YouTube.

The Academy leaned into that popularity during the ceremony. “Golden” was staged as one of the evening’s most elaborate performances, complete with neon demon masks, synchronized dancers, and a rotating stage that echoed the film’s supernatural concert battles. The number brought the usually reserved Dolby Theatre audience to its feet and drew one of the night’s loudest reactions.

Throughout the night, speeches were cut short (the best original song speech being one of the most obvious examples) for the sake of the broadcast, so many recipients kept their comments brief, yet poignant. Kang talked about the importance that KPop Demon Hunters has had with Korean audiences who have never had the chance to see themselves frontlined in a major Hollywood animated feature.

“For those of you who look like me, I’m so sorry that it took us so long to see us in a movie like this,” Kang said. “That means the next generation don’t have to go longing. This is for Korea and Koreans everywhere.”

Appelhans used his time to praise not just the music in his film, but also the power of music to unify. “Music and stories have this power to connect us as humans across cultures and borders,” he said. “I want to take a moment to tell young filmmakers, artists, and musicians in all corners of the world: Tell your stories, sing in your voice, and I promise you the world is waiting.”

It’s worth noting that while KPDH‘s Oscar win felt increasingly predictable as the awards season rolled along, it was anything but when the film first came out. Last June, Netflix was treating it like any other mid-budget animated original release, promoting it here and there but letting the title find an audience (or not, as seems to be the case with many of the streamer’s other originals) on its own. The company’s major PR push at the time was behind In Your Dreams, a worthwhile endeavor for a charming, family-friendly feature, but one that took only a couple of weeks to be backburnered as KPDH took off in a way no other title has ever done for Netflix. Nine months later and after one of the most impressive on-the-fly marketing campaigns in animation history, it’s easy to forget KPDH‘s humble beginnings.

In the animated short race, Canada extended its hugely impressive influence over the category with Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski’s The Girl Who Cried Pearls scoring the Oscar for their NFB-backed film. This was the 12th Oscar for the National Film Board of Canada, out of a remarkable 79 nominations. It was Lavis and Szczerbowski’s second nomination after 2007’s Madame Tutli-Putli.

The powerful and exquisitely crafted short qualified for this year’s Oscars by winning the highly competitive short film category at Toronto, beating out high-profile live-action titles in the process. The hauntingly beautiful stop-motion unspools in Montreal (which got a shoutout in the directors’ acceptance speech), following a poor boy who discovers a mysterious girl whose tears transform into luminous pearls. As he with exquisite handcrafted puppets and miniature sets, the film’s aesthetic blends gothic realism with lyrical surrealism.

While both KPop Demon Hunters and The Girl Who Cried Pearls always felt like frontrunners, neither race ever seemed as sure a lock as this year’s VFX category, where Avatar: Fire and Ash took the Oscar home. The win completes a hugely successful awards season for the third film in James Cameron’s ongoing sci-fi epic.

Joe Letteri, Richard Baneham, Eric Saindon, and Daniel Barrett were honored with the award. The film’s effects were led primarily by Wētā FX, which created most of Pandora’s digital environments and characters.

2026 Animation and VFX Oscar Nominees and Winners

Animated Feature

• Arco, Ugo Bienvenu, Félix de Givry, Sophie Mas, and Natalie Portman
• Elio, Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi, Adrian Molina, and Mary Alice Drumm
• WINNER: KPop Demon Hunters, Maggie Kang, Chris Appelhans, and Michelle L.M. Wong
• Little Amelie, Maïlys Vallade, Liane-Cho Han, Nidia Santiago, and Henri Magalon
• Zootopia 2, Jared Bush, Byron Howard, and Yvett Merino

Animated Short

• Butterfly, Florence Miailhe and Ron Dyens
• Forevergreen, Nathan Engelhardt and Jeremy Spears
• WINNER: The Girl Who Cried Pearls, Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski
• Retirement Plan, John Kelly and Andrew Freedman
• The Three Sisters, Konstantin Bronzit

Visual Effects

• WINNER: Avatar: Fire and Ash, Joe Letteri, Richard Baneham, Eric Saindon, and Daniel Barrett
• F1, Ryan Tudhope, Nicolas Chevallier, Robert Harrington, and Keith Dawson
• Jurassic World Rebirth, David Vickery, Stephen Aplin, Charmaine Chan, and Neil Corbould
• The Lost Bus, Charlie Noble, David Zaretti, Russell Bowen, and Brandon K. McLaughlin
• Sinners, Michael Ralla, Espen Nordahl, Guido Wolter, and Donnie Dean

Song

• “Dear Me,” from Diane Warren: Relentless; Music and Lyric by Diane Warren
• WINNER: “Golden,” from KPop Demon Hunters; Music and Lyric by EJAE, Mark Sonnenblick, Joong Gyu Kwak, Yu Han Lee, Hee Dong Nam, Jeong Hoon Seon and Teddy Park
• “I Lie to You,” from Sinners; Music and Lyric by Raphael Saadiq and Ludwig Goransson
• “Sweet Dreams of Joy,” from Viva Verdi!; Music and Lyric by Nicholas Pike
• “Train Dreams,” from Train Dreams; Music by Nick Cave and Bryce Dessner; Lyric by Nick Cave