One category resulted in a rare tie at the 2026 Oscars.
Two short films, The Singers and Two People Exchanging Saliva, both won awards for best live action short film at the 98th Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday, March 15.
“It’s a tie! I’m not joking! It’s actually a tie, so everyone calm down, we’re gonna get through this,” presenter Kumail Nanjiani told the audience at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, before allowing the winners to come on stage one after another and give separate acceptance speeches.
“A tie, wow, we didn’t know that could happen,” The Singers director Sam A. Davis said as he began his acceptance speech.
The other nominees included Butcher’s Stain, A Friend of Dorothy and Jane Austen’s Period Drama.
The wins marked only the seventh tie in Oscars history. The first occurred in 1931 when Fredric March and Wallace Beery both won best actor for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Champ, respectively. However, it was not a true tie, as March had one more vote than Beery. The rules at the time allowed for two nominees to win if they came within three votes of each other, although this rule has since changed.
The second instance happened in 1949, when both A Chance to Live and So Much for So Little won best documentary short.
In 1968, the Academy shocked viewers when both Katherine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand took home best actress for The Lion in Winter and Funny Girl, respectively.
The best documentary feature category saw a tie in 1986 when both Artie Shaw: Time Is All You’ve Got and Down and Out in America won the award.
In 1944, the award for best live action short film went to both Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life and Trevor.
A tie most recently occurred in 2012 when Skyfall and Zero Dark Thirty won best editing.
The Singers stars Michael Young, Chris Smither, Will Harrington, Judah Kelly, Matt Corcoran and Michael Keyes and depicts an improvised sing-off between patrons at a pub.
In his acceptance speech, Davis thanked the film’s cast and crew.
“The Singers is a simple story about the power of music and art to bring us together in a moment when we live in an increasingly isolated world,” he added. “May we keep looking for beauty in unexpected places, and may we all be brave enough to keep on singing.”
Two People Exchanging Saliva, directed by Natalie Musteata and Alexandre Singh, is a French-language short drama film that depicts a dystopian world in which kissing is considered inappropriate and a crime punishable by death. Two young women, Malaise (Luàna Bajrami) and Angine (Zar Amir Ebrahimi), fall in love and attempt to kiss in private.
“Thank you to the Academy for supporting a film that is weird and that is queer and that is made by a majority of women,” Musteata said in her acceptance speech.
