Oscar Animation Nominations 2026: "Arco', 'Pearls', 'Little Amelie'

Τwo French films and three US animation features compete for the 2026 Academy Awards, as revealed in today's (22 January 2026)  Oscar nominations. Both the Annecy Cristal winner 'Arco' by Ugo Bienvenu and the 'Little Amélie or the Character of Rain' poetic film by Maïlys Vallade and Liane-Cho Han (our film review here) made it to the five nominees in a field usually dominated by US studio works.

This year was no exception, even though the big winner might be what turned out to be the Golden Globe winner; we're talking here about the Sony Pictures Animation 'KPop Demon Hunters', whose Netflix popularity should not be underestimated. The usual Disney/Pixar entries are here with 'Zootopia 2' and 'Elio' respectively. 

The 5 animated features for a 2026 Academy Award

(names denote the Academy Award nominees)

• Arco, Ugo Bienvenu, Félix de Givry, Sophie Mas and Natalie Portman (France)
• Elio, Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi, Adrian Molina and Mary Alice Drumm (US)
• KPop Demon Hunters, Maggie Kang, Chris Appelhans and Michelle L.M. Wong  (US)
• Little Amélie or the Character of Rain, Maïlys Vallade, Liane-Cho Han, Nidia Santiago, and Henri Magalon  (France/ Belgium)
• Zootopia 2, Jared Bush, Byron Howard and Yvett Merino (US)

2025 winner: 'Flow' by Gints Zilbalodis

Little Amelie or the Character of the Rain

In the animation short category, the National Film Board of Canada gets another nomination for an Academy Award, and so its directors, Chris Lavis & Maciek Szczerbowski. After their 2007 Academy Award nomination for the stop-motion 'Madame Tutli-Putli', they got another nomination for another stop-motion (and painstakingly prepared) film, 'The Girl Who Cried Pearls'. 

But the Russian Konstantin Bronzit (who submitted his animation short with a pen name) is the veteran here in terms of nominations. He secures his third Academy Award nomination (after the 2008 'Lavatory Lovestory' and the 2015 'We Can't Live Without Cosmos') with the animated drama 'The Three Sisters' (watch the trailer).

The French auteur Florence Miailhe gets her first Academy Award nomination with the Holocaust-themed 'Butterfly' (Papillon), an animation short that had already won the Cristal Bear at the 2024 Berlinale Festival (Generation KPlus). 'Forevergreen' by Nathan Engelhardt and Jeremy Spears is a sweet, 3D animation for children by Disney veterans; the Irish 'Retirement Plan' by John Kelly (an RCA graduate) is a meditative, 2D animation portrait of a person who dreams of retirement.

As usual, more challenging choices, like this year's Ukraine-related 'I Died in Irpin' by Anastasiia Falileieva, the horror-surrealistic 'Playing God' by Matteo Burani -and even this year's Annecy Cristal winner 'Night Boots' by the French Pierre-Luc Granjon, were left out.

The 5 animation shorts for an Academy Award

"Butterfly" (Papillon), Florence Miailhe (France)
"Forevergreen", Nathan Engelhardt, Jeremy Spears (US)
"The Girl Who Cried Pearls", Chris Lavis, Maciek Szczerbowski (Canada)
"Retirement Plan", John Kelly (Ireland)
"The Three Sisters", Konstantin Bronzit

The Girl Who Cried Pearls

The other 10  Oscar-shortlisted films.

"Autokar", Sylwia Szkiłądź (Belgium, France)
"Cardboard", J.P. Vine (UK)
"Éiru", Giovanna Ferrari (Ireland)
"Hurikán", Jan Saska  (Czechia, France, Slovakia, Bosnia & Herzegovina)
"I Died in Irpin", Anastasiia Falileieva (Czechia, Slovakia, Ukraine)
"The Night Boots", Pierre-Luc Granjon (France)
"Playing God", Matteo Burani (Italy, France)
"The Quinta’s Ghost", James A. Castillo (Spain)
"The Shyness of Trees", Sofiia Chuikovska, Loïck du Plessis D’Argentré, Lina Han, Simin He, Jiaxin Huang, Maud Le Bras & Bingqing Shu (France)
"Snow Bear", Aaron Blaise (US)

2025 winner: 'In the Shadow of the Cypress', Shirin Sohani and Hossein Molayemi

The 98th Oscars will be held on Sunday, March 15, 2026, at the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood.

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