Despite a highly anticipated battle for Best Actor and two unusually populist films vying for Best Picture, this year’s Academy Awards faced a significant decline in ratings.
The Oscars, broadcast on ABC and Hulu, attracted 17.9 million viewers, a 9 percent decline from last year’s ceremony. This was the smallest audience for the Academy Awards since 2022, when 16.68 million people tuned in.
Last year’s Academy Awards, also hosted by Conan O’Brien, drew in 19.69 million viewers.
Ratings for major award telecasts were broadly down this year. Both the Golden Globes and the Grammy Awards faced about a 6 percent decline in 2026 from last year’s events.
Widely seen films like Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another and Ryan Coogler’s Sinners won several significant accolades. The race for Best Actor was won by Sinners’ Michael B. Jordan, beating out heavyweight contenders including Leonardo DiCaprio and Timotheé Chalamet.
Despite a dip in viewership, the 98th Academy Awards maintained its position as the most-watched primetime entertainment telecast this season, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The event also saw a surge in social media views, gaining 181 million impressions, a 42 percent increase.
This year’s awards had several viral moments: Teyana Taylor’s unfortunate incident with a security guard, a heartfelt tribute to the late Rob Reiner, Jimmy Kimmel torching the first lady while presenting, several Bridesmaids castmates reuniting on stage, political statements from A-List actors, and a rare tie.
The Daily Beast’s Kevin Fallon called this year’s ceremony “pretentious,” writing, “This was the most unpredictable ceremony in years, which should have sparked interest, yet it was still hard to care. It was more fun to read people’s jokes about ballet and opera than it was to tune in to see if Chalamet would win the Oscar.”
