The 98th Academy Awards are set for Sunday night in Hollywood.
While all of the film world awaits who wins the Best Picture race between One Battle After Another and Sinners, I've been keeping a close eye on the odds board in an effort to find value on everything from the top prizes all the way down to the lesser-known films and technical categories.
Here are my best bets for the 2026 Oscars.
If you want to get in on the action and make a prediction about the Academy Awards, Kalshi allows users in most of the 50 U.S. states to make predictions and win real money. We wrote a full explainer on how it works here and have a Kalshi promo code to help you get started.
Best Actor
I’m going with Timothee Chalamet here.
I think Michael B. Jordan was a great bet here all the way up until the Screen Actors Guild, where he won and became the favorite. But I still think Chalamet was better, and I think we’re getting great value here after the odds flip.
Depending on how you manage your bankroll, and with prediction markets offering ‘No’ options, you could also look into betting Chalamet to win vs. betting ‘No’ on Jordan to win Best Actor, which also shows value according to Gold Derby’s experts and editors.
Ultimately, this came down to betting the underdog, which became Chalamet over the last two weeks. Anything plus money is a good bet because I think he’s the clear favorite.
Bet: Timothee Chalamet (Anything Plus Money)
Best Supporting Actor
This has seemed like a three-man race with Sean Penn as the favorite, Stellan Skarsgard right behind him and Delroy Lindo as the dark horse.
Penn was obviously fantastic in One Battle After Another, but Skarsgard, I think, has a real shot here. If you look at his screen time in Sentimental Value, he was almost like a main character, like he could’ve been competing in the Best Actor race instead. So I think at +400 there’s some real value here.
Another way to attack this is to just bet ‘No’ on Penn at around +250. If you think this really is a three-man race and that Lindo, or maybe even one of the longer shots, has a chance in what seems to be a pretty wide-open race, getting slightly less juice on the ‘No’ on Penn instead of just betting Skarsgard covers you on that angle.
Bets: Stellan Skarsgard +400 | Sean Penn 'No' +257
Best Supporting Actress
This is a category where Gold Derby has been extremely strong, as 13 of the last 14 top choices by their experts and editors have won this award. The one exception was when Jamie Lee Curtis won for Everything Everywhere All At Once a few years ago.
To be fair, Amy Madigan’s Gold Derby support is on the lower end, which was also the case a few years ago with Curtis.
But still, we’re looking at a situation where Gold Derby nails this winner at a better than 90% clip, and we can get the favorite, Madigan, at plus money. So I think she’s the best bet.
Generally, when I’m looking at underdogs, it’s in a spot where the favorite is in the -200 to -400 range. So now, because of all the uncertainty around this category, the fact that I can get the favorite at plus money is a boon.
Bet: Amy Madigan (Anything Plus Money)
Best Casting
This is a pure math play on a heavy favorite.
Gold Derby has Sinners winning this category around 90% of the time, so it should really be close to like -900.
The caveat here is, of course, that this is the first year of the Best Casting category, so nobody, including the experts and editors at Gold Derby, have anything to go off of other than what we’ve seen in the precursor awards.
I’ll go with that math, and the fact that you can get Sinners in the -300 to -400 range makes it worth a bet.
Bet: Sinners -400
Best Cinematography
This is a great spot here where we’re betting the numbers, and the numbers say that One Battle After Another should not be as prohibitive a favorite as it is in the market.
Gold Derby has Sinners at 46% here and One Battle After Another at 37%, while Train Dreams is at 17%.
In the market, we’re still looking at One Battle After Another as the favorite, while Sinners is an underdog at north of 2/1.
This is massive value. I think this is a smash spot for Sinners, and I’d also sprinkle in some Train Dreams here as well.
Bets: Sinners +335 | Train Dreams +669 | One Battle After Another 'No' +257
Best Production Design
I like Sinners in a lot of these technical categories. While I may not have loved the writing or acting, there’s no denying that the sets were great. It was a bright, good-looking film, and I think it can pick up some of these visual awards.
Sinners is coming off at around +600 right now, and we’ve seen underdogs win this category before. In 2023, All Quiet on the Western Front was only around 3% on Gold Derby and it won. This year, Sinners is at around 7%.
Twice in the last seven years, the No. 1 pick on Gold Derby has been upset, so that’s a 29% chance there, and the favorite this year, Frankenstein, is such an extreme favorite at -1400 that there’s going to be value on the underdogs.
Oh, and of those two upsets in the last seven years, one of them was Black Panther, which you may recall was directed by Ryan Coogler, and the production designer was Hannah Beecher — the same as Sinners.
Bet: Sinners +600
Best Makeup and Hairstyling
If you think Sinners is going to do well on Sunday night, these are the awards you’re going to see it taking home. And I think even if it loses some of the bigger awards, it should play well here.
Like Production Design, this is a category where the favorite is vulnerable and way too big of a favorite based on the current odds. And like Production Design, that favorite is Frankenstein, which is getting all kinds of love in these technical categories but feels like it might get shut out come awards night.
One of the big reasons is when we look at what these technical guilds did. The makeup and hairstyling have their own guilds, and at the makeup awards, Sinners beat Frankenstein, and at the hairstyling awards, Sinners also beat Frankenstein.
So I don’t really understand these odds. Sinners is the No. 2 choice right now on Gold Derby, and the No. 2 choice in Gold Derby has won this award in two of the last three years.
So something seems off on these odds. The market is more likely to get things wrong in these more obscure categories, and this seems like a good opportunity for that.
Bet: Sinners +800
Best Animated Short
These are categories where I’m just going to trust the modeling and trust the experts and editors at Gold Derby, who are way more invested in these categories than myself or the betting public at large.
They have Butterfly winning this category at 74%, which has implied odds of -291, but in the market you can get it at around even money. So there’s massive value there.
Bet: Butterfly +100
Best Documentary Short
Once again, we’re finding value with Gold Derby, which has All the Empty Rooms at 85% to win in this category.
The market, on the other hand, has it at -169, so we’re once again getting value in this category.
Bet: All the Empty Rooms -169
Best Live Action Short
Finally, we have A Friend of Dorothy, which Gold Derby makes the favorite at 53%.
So, what are that film’s odds in the market? An insane +400. There’s just massive value here in another category where the market just can’t know anything noteworthy.
