Everything we know about the Oscar voting mechanism

The Oscars 2025 ceremony is just around the corner, and discussions are on the rise about who will be among the winners. If you follow the online chatter, you must be aware of the frontrunners to win. There have been discussions over whether Emilia Perez might lose after controversies surrounding the film surfaced online. There are talks about the close competition between Anora's Mikey Madison and The Substance's Demi Moore for the Best Actress award.

The situation is not new when it comes to the Academy Awards. However, the uninitiated could get flustered by the sheer volume of information, wondering how the winner are decided — or, more specifically, how the voting to decide the winners takes place. After all, the ceremony has changed vastly over decades since 1929, when the Academy Awards were handed out for the first time. The rules on how many films or artists get selected and how the winners are chosen have transformed over the years.

So, how does Oscar voting work? Let's break down the Oscar voting mechanism.

How are the Oscar nominees chosen?

According to Variety, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) has 17 branches, which include actors, writers, cinematographers, editors, and other artists. Some branches have multiple categories eg. there are four acting categories and two writing categories (adapted screenplay and original screenplay).

Each branch gets to nominate people in the respective categories. So, actors nominate actors, writers nominate writers, and so forth. There are 23 categories, and soon there will be 24 with a new one reportedly for casting.

How are the Oscar winners chosen?

All AMPAS members can vote for winners in all categories. Whoever gets the most votes, wins. However, the rules are different for the Best Picture race. Here, the members have to rank the 10 nominated films.

Whichever film gets 50% or more of the votes, wins, and the one that gets the least is eliminated, according to oscars.org. If a member votes for the eliminated choice, the vote goes to the film ranked next in their list. The process goes on and on until one film gets more than 50% votes.

How does Oscar voting work?

The voting is done by online ballots procured from the AMPAS members, who are asked to vote only for films they have seen. This is where the Oscar campaign becomes important.

The AMPAS members might not be able to see many films as a film journalist, critic, or an enthusiast would. So, the campaigns help films reach these voters. However, that doesn't mean all campaigned films get nominated — since the voters should also appreciate what they see.

How many films get nominated for Best Picture?

In 2009, the AMPAS decided to increase the count of films in the Best Picture category from five to 10. Eventually, the number was kept flexible to nominate between five to 10 films, instead of sticking to a fixed number. This decision was again reverted in 2021 to bring the number back to 10, which is reflected in the Best Picture category at this year's Academy Awards.

How are frontrunners decided?

The frontrunners for Oscar are often based on guesswork from observed patterns of the past year's winners. So, an actor who wins the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) award or a Golden Globe-winning film might become Oscar frontrunners in those categories. However, there are no set norms, which means there are surprise winners, too.