Oscars Best Picture Winners List: Every Year’s Oscar-Winning Film

The Academy Award for Best Picture is the most prestigious award given out at the Oscars. It honors the film that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences judges to be the best of the year.

This guide gives you interesting facts and the complete list of winners from the very first ceremony in 1929 to the most recent one in 2026.

Interesting Facts About the Best Picture Award

Most Oscar nominations ever: Sinners (2025) broke all records with 16 nominations at the 98th Academy Awards in 2026. This beat the old record of 14 that All About Eve (1950), Titanic (1997), and La La Land (2016) shared.

Most wins by one film: Three films share the top spot with 11 Oscar wins each. Ben-Hur (1959), Titanic (1997), and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) hold this record together. Only The Return of the King swept every single one of its nominated categories.

First non-English winner: Parasite (2019) made history as the first non-English language film to win Best Picture. Germany’s All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) became the second.

Female directors: Three women have directed Best Picture winners. Kathryn Bigelow won for The Hurt Locker in 2010. Chloe Zhao won for Nomadland in 2021. Sian Heder won for CODA in 2021. Nine women total have received Best Director nominations in Oscar history.

Sequels that won: Only two sequels ever won Best Picture. The Godfather Part II (1974) and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) are the only ones.

Sean Baker’s historic night: Baker became just the second person in Oscar history to win four awards in one night. He won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Film Editing for Anora in 2025. Walt Disney was the only other person to do this, back in 1954, but Disney’s wins were for four different films. Baker is the first to win four for a single film.

Moonlight’s historic win: Moonlight (2016) became the first film with an all-Black cast and the first LGBTQ-themed film to win Best Picture. Presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway accidentally read the wrong envelope and declared La La Land the winner before the mistake got corrected on stage.

First new Oscar category since 2002: The 98th Academy Awards introduced Best Achievement in Casting. It is the first new competitive category since Best Animated Feature arrived in 2002. One Battle After Another won that inaugural award.

First female cinematography winner: Autumn Durald Arkapaw became the first woman and first Black cinematographer in Oscar history to win Best Cinematography at the 2026 ceremony, for Sinners.

Only X-rated Best Picture winner: Midnight Cowboy (1969) is the only film rated X to win Best Picture. Oliver! (1968) is the only G-rated film to win.

Streaming milestone: CODA (2021) became the first film from a streaming service to win Best Picture. Apple TV+ released the film.

The Complete List of Best Picture Winners

The list starts with the most recent winners and goes back to 1927. The year shown is when the film was released.

Year	Ceremony	Best Picture Winner	Director
2025	98th	One Battle After Another	Paul Thomas Anderson
2024	97th	Anora	Sean Baker
2023	96th	Oppenheimer	Christopher Nolan
2022	95th	Everything Everywhere All at Once	Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert
2021	94th	CODA	Sian Heder
2020	93rd	Nomadland	Chloé Zhao
2019	92nd	Parasite	Bong Joon-ho
2018	91st	Green Book	Peter Farrelly
2017	90th	The Shape of Water	Guillermo del Toro
2016	89th	Moonlight	Barry Jenkins
2015	88th	Spotlight	Tom McCarthy
2014	87th	Birdman	Alejandro G. Iñárritu
2013	86th	12 Years a Slave	Steve McQueen
2012	85th	Argo	Ben Affleck
2011	84th	The Artist	Michel Hazanavicius
2010	83rd	The King’s Speech	Tom Hooper
2009	82nd	The Hurt Locker	Kathryn Bigelow
2008	81st	Slumdog Millionaire	Danny Boyle
2007	80th	No Country for Old Men	Joel & Ethan Coen
2006	79th	The Departed	Martin Scorsese
2005	78th	Crash	Paul Haggis
2004	77th	Million Dollar Baby	Clint Eastwood
2003	76th	The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King	Peter Jackson
2002	75th	Chicago	Rob Marshall
2001	74th	A Beautiful Mind	Ron Howard
2000	73rd	Gladiator	Ridley Scott
1999	72nd	American Beauty	Sam Mendes
1998	71st	Shakespeare in Love	John Madden
1997	70th	Titanic	James Cameron
1996	69th	The English Patient	Anthony Minghella
1995	68th	Braveheart	Mel Gibson
1994	67th	Forrest Gump	Robert Zemeckis
1993	66th	Schindler’s List	Steven Spielberg
1992	65th	Unforgiven	Clint Eastwood
1991	64th	The Silence of the Lambs	Jonathan Demme
1990	63rd	Dances with Wolves	Kevin Costner
1989	62nd	Driving Miss Daisy	Bruce Beresford
1988	61st	Rain Man	Barry Levinson
1987	60th	The Last Emperor	Bernardo Bertolucci
1986	59th	Platoon	Oliver Stone
1985	58th	Out of Africa	Sydney Pollack
1984	57th	Amadeus	Milos Forman
1983	56th	Terms of Endearment	James L. Brooks
1982	55th	Gandhi	Richard Attenborough
1981	54th	Chariots of Fire	Hugh Hudson
1980	53rd	Ordinary People	Robert Redford
1979	52nd	Kramer vs. Kramer	Robert Benton
1978	51st	The Deer Hunter	Michael Cimino
1977	50th	Annie Hall	Woody Allen
1976	49th	Rocky	John G. Avildsen
1975	48th	One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest	Milos Forman
1974	47th	The Godfather Part II	Francis Ford Coppola
1973	46th	The Sting	George Roy Hill
1972	45th	The Godfather	Francis Ford Coppola
1971	44th	The French Connection	William Friedkin
1970	43rd	Patton	Franklin J. Schaffner
1969	42nd	Midnight Cowboy	John Schlesinger
1968	41st	Oliver!	Carol Reed
1967	40th	In the Heat of the Night	Norman Jewison
1966	39th	A Man for All Seasons	Fred Zinnemann
1965	38th	The Sound of Music	Robert Wise
1964	37th	My Fair Lady	George Cukor
1963	36th	Tom Jones	Tony Richardson
1962	35th	Lawrence of Arabia	David Lean
1961	34th	West Side Story	Robert Wise & Jerome Robbins
1960	33rd	The Apartment	Billy Wilder
1959	32nd	Ben-Hur	William Wyler
1958	31st	Gigi	Vincente Minnelli
1957	30th	The Bridge on the River Kwai	David Lean
1956	29th	Around the World in 80 Days	Michael Anderson
1955	28th	Marty	Delbert Mann
1954	27th	On the Waterfront	Elia Kazan
1953	26th	From Here to Eternity	Fred Zinnemann
1952	25th	The Greatest Show on Earth	Cecil B. DeMille
1951	24th	An American in Paris	Vincente Minnelli
1950	23rd	All About Eve	Joseph L. Mankiewicz
1949	22nd	All the King’s Men	Robert Rossen
1948	21st	Hamlet	Laurence Olivier
1947	20th	Gentleman’s Agreement	Elia Kazan
1946	19th	The Best Years of Our Lives	William Wyler
1945	18th	The Lost Weekend	Billy Wilder
1944	17th	Going My Way	Leo McCarey
1943	16th	Casablanca	Michael Curtiz
1942	15th	Mrs. Miniver	William Wyler
1941	14th	How Green Was My Valley	John Ford
1940	13th	Rebecca	Alfred Hitchcock
1939	12th	Gone with the Wind	Victor Fleming
1938	11th	You Can’t Take It with You	Frank Capra
1937	10th	The Life of Emile Zola	William Dieterle
1936	9th	The Great Ziegfeld	Robert Z. Leonard
1935	8th	Mutiny on the Bounty	Frank Lloyd
1934	7th	It Happened One Night	Frank Capra
1932/33	6th	Cavalcade	Frank Lloyd
1931/32	5th	Grand Hotel	Edmund Goulding
1930/31	4th	Cimarron	Wesley Ruggles
1929/30	3rd	All Quiet on the Western Front	Lewis Milestone
1928/29	2nd	The Broadway Melody	Harry Beaumont
1927/28	1st	Wings	William A. Wellman

Note: The first Academy Awards in 1929 had two Best Picture categories. Wings won Outstanding Picture and Sunrise won Unique and Artistic Picture. The Academy dropped the second category the following year and confirmed Wings as the sole first Best Picture winner. The early ceremonies from 1927 to 1933 covered split film years rather than a single calendar year.

Also Check: Oscars 2026: Complete Winners list

The 98th Academy Awards (2026): One Battle After Another

The 98th Academy Awards took place on March 15, 2026 at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. Conan O’Brien hosted for the second year in a row. ABC aired the show live and Hulu streamed it.

One Battle After Another won six Oscars including Best Picture. Sinners won four. Frankenstein won three.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s film is a comic thriller about ex-left-wing revolutionaries who reunite to save a colleague’s daughter from an old enemy. The story draws loosely from Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland. These were Anderson’s first career Oscar wins.

Autumn Durald Arkapaw became the first woman and first Black cinematographer to win Best Cinematography, for Sinners. Jessie Buckley became the first Irish woman to win Best Actress, for Hamnet. Sean Penn won Best Supporting Actor for One Battle After Another but did not attend the ceremony. Kieran Culkin accepted the award on his behalf.

The ceremony also saw a rare tie in Best Live Action Short Film. The Singers and Two People Exchanging Saliva both won, only the seventh tie in Oscar history.

The 97th Academy Awards (2025): Anora’s Historic Night

The 97th Academy Awards took place on March 2, 2025 at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. Conan O’Brien hosted for the first time. ABC aired the show live and Hulu streamed it.

Anora won five Oscars that night. Sean Baker made history by winning four of them personally: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Film Editing. He became the first person to win four individual Oscars for a single film in one night. Mikey Madison won Best Actress.

Major winners included Adrien Brody for Best Actor in The Brutalist and Kieran Culkin for Best Supporting Actor in A Real Pain. Zoe Saldana won Best Supporting Actress for Emilia Perez and became the first American of Dominican descent to win an Oscar. Brazil took home its first Oscar for I’m Still Here in Best International Feature and Latvia won its first for Flow in Best Animated Feature.

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