Oscar Best Picture Race Tightens as Conclave and Emilia Pérez Trade Wins at Final Precursors
With the Academy Awards less than two weeks away the Oscar best picture race tightened dramatically on February 26 2026 after Conclave won the Directors Guild Award while Emilia Perez took the Producers Guild Award creating a historic split that makes predicting the winner nearly impossible.
Oscar Race Hits Fever Pitch as DGA and PGA Split Between Conclave and Emilia Pérez
Two weeks out from the Academy Awards, the race for Best Picture is genuinely too close to call. Wednesday brought a split that Oscar analysts describe as rare and significant: Edward Berger's papal thriller Conclave won the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures, while Jacques Audiard's Spanish-language musical crime drama Emilia Pérez claimed the Producers Guild of America Award for Motion Picture of the Year. These two guilds are among the most reliable predictors of the Best Picture Oscar, and they voted for different films in the same cycle.
The split sets up the most genuinely unpredictable Best Picture finish in at least a decade. Both films have now accumulated winning momentum. Neither has a clean lane to the finish line.
What the DGA and PGA Wins Tell Us About the Race
The DGA Award went to Conclave with a degree of surprise. Edward Berger, the German director known for the Netflix adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front, was considered a strong contender, but many expected Brady Corbet, director of The Brutalist, to take the prize given the epic's sweep at BAFTA earlier this month. Conclave's DGA win signals that directors — who make up a significant bloc within the Academy — see Berger's tight, precise filmmaking as the year's best work behind the camera.
The PGA, on the other hand, reflects the preferences of producers, a group that tends to skew toward films with broader commercial resonance and cultural buzz. Emilia Pérez arrived at this awards season as a critical favorite and a cultural flashpoint, becoming the most-watched non-English-language Netflix film ever released and generating substantial conversation — not all of it positive — about its representation of Mexican identity and transgender experience.
According to awards strategist Tom O'Neil, founder of GoldDerby, a DGA-PGA split of this kind has only predicted the Best Picture Oscar winner correctly 60 percent of the time historically. When it happens, it is a signal that the Academy itself is divided. And a divided Academy is one that can deliver a result nobody fully expects.
What the Final 13 Days Look Like for Each Film
Conclave's campaign is leaning into its technical precision, its ensemble performance, and its political relevance. The film's story of a secret Vatican conclave to elect a new Pope has been read by some critics as an allegory for institutional power and hidden identity. It has five nominations including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay.
Emilia Pérez leads all nominees with nine nominations including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Original Score. Its record-breaking Netflix viewership gives it cultural penetration no other nominee can match. But the controversies about the film's cultural accuracy and casting choices have energized opposition within Academy membership in ways that are difficult to quantify.
Voting for the Academy Awards opened Tuesday and closes March 1. Whatever the outcome on March 8, the race has already demonstrated that in 2026, the Oscars remain genuinely unpredictable — and entirely capable of surprises.
