For just the seventh time in Academy Awards history, there was a tie at the 2026 Oscars. The Singers and Two People Exchanging Saliva both won Oscars in the Live Action Short Film category.
Presenter Kumail Nanjiani looked surprised at first when opening the winners’ envelope, but then sangfroid took over. “It’s a tie. I’m not joking. It’s actually a tie. So, everyone, calm down. We’re gonna get through this. Focus up,” he said.
He explained that he would announce one winner first, and when they were done with their speech, the other winners would get their chance. But once the shock wore off, he made a great observation: “It’s ironic that the short film Oscar is going to take twice as long,” he said.
The awards show’s host, Conan O’Brien, also got in on it with a joke about how the outcome would affect prediction-market betting websites: “I just want to say congratulations to both winners,” he said. “You just ruined 22,000 Oscar polls.”
Although ties at the Oscars are rare, they’re not unprecedented. The first time was a bit of an oddity, though. At the fifth Academy Awards, for 1931 and ’32, Frederic March won for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Wallace Beery got an award for The Champ. March actually earned one more vote than Beery, but the rules at the time made it so a three-vote margin made it a tie; the Academy has since changed the rules.
The Oscars didn’t see another tie until 1942 when A Chance to Live and So Much for So Little both won in the Documentary (Short Subject) category. In 1968, Katharine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand both won in the Best Actress category for The Lion in Winter and Funny Girl, respectively. Two documentaries, Artie Shaw: Time Is All You’ve Got and Down and Out in America, won in 1986.
The Live Action Short Film category saw two winners in 1994 for Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life and Trevor. And most recently, until now, the sound editing category recognized Skyfall and Zero Dark Thirty in 2012.
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