BAFTA Best Film: The 5 Nominees & Where To Watch Them
By
32 minutes ago
And the nominees are…
The 2026 BAFTA Film Awards nominations are here, with a total of 46 pictures up for a prize. But only five of them are in the running for the biggest award of the evening: Best Picture.
Unlike its American counterpart, the Oscars, where 10 movies are nominated for Best Picture, only five pictures are nominated for Best Film at the BAFTA Film Awards. In 2026, they are:
- Hamnet
- Marty Supreme
- One Battle After Another
- Sentimental Value
- Sinners
Coincidentally, these are also five of the most-nominated films at the Awards, which are presented for the 79th time in 2026. One Battle After Another leads the pack with 14 nominations, trailed by Sinners with 13, Marty Supreme and Hamnet with 11, and Sentimental Value with eight. They trump five more films noted on BAFTA’s longlist for this category: The Ballad of Wallis Island, Bugonia, Frankenstein, I Swear and Nuremberg.
All five films nominated for Best Film at the BAFTA Film Awards are also up for Best Picture at the Academy Awards in the US, with the winner for the latter revealed on Sunday 15 March. Stateside the final list of nominees is 10-strong, so five more films are in the running for the grand prize, two of which were also on BAFTA’s longlist. They are: Bugonia, F1, Frankenstein, The Secret Agent and Train Dreams.
The 79th BAFTA Film Awards ceremony will take place on Sunday 22 February 2026 at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall in London. Before then, there’s plenty of time to watch the five movies in the running for the glittering Best Film BAFTA (and make up your own mind on who should bag the iconic face-shaped gong). Here’s how.
BAFTA Best Film 2026: Stream The Nominees
Hamnet
The BAFTA Film Awards may be British, but Hamnet is the only British film in the running for the top prize this year (for more British talent, take a look at the Outstanding British Film Category, where the likes of 28 Years Later, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy and The Ballad of Wallis Island get a shoutout). Director Chloé Zhao spins a magical, nature-connected tale of love and loss in Hamnet, which is the much-awaited film adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s bestselling (and Women’s Prize winning) novel of the same name. We centre on Agnes (Jessie Buckley), natural healer and wife of a young and lost William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal), whose 11-year-old son Hamnet dies suddenly of the bubonic plague.
Hamnet was released in UK cinemas in January, so it isn’t available to stream just yet, but you can still catch it on the big screen.
Marty Supreme
A24 bet a pretty penny on Josh Safdie’s frenetic ping-pong movie Marty Supreme, which cost $70 million to produce – a record for the independent film and TV production company. But with a passionate lead star in Timothée Chalamet, the gamble paid off: within a month the movie had grossed $110.1 million at the box office, boasting the best opening weekend since La La Land (2016). And Chalamet played a key role in this, generating buzz through unconventional marketing techniques like leaked Zoom call spoofs and a giant orange blimp emblazoned with the film title. Relentlessly high-octane and in the works for almost a decade, the film itself centres on the titular table tennis player – a real man credited with bringing the little-known sport to the masses.
Marty Supreme landed in UK cinemas on Boxing Day, so it isn’t available to stream just yet – but you can still catch it on the big screen.
One Battle After Another
Over his three-decade career, legendary director Paul Thomas Anderson has racked up 24 BAFTA nominations across five of his eight films – but he’s only ever taken home four. Will he score more in 2026? His ninth film One Battle After Another has 14 chances at winning a prize this year (taking PTA’s career BAFTA noms to 38) – the most nominated film in 2026. It’s also PTA’s highest grossing film to date, and the director has made a good showing at the Oscars, boasting 13 nominations there. The film itself is a black comedy action thriller starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn and Benicio del Toro. It follows an ex-revolutionary dragged back into conflict when a corrupt military officer targets him and his daughter.
One Battle After Another is available to rent across platforms.
Sentimental Value
Norwegian director Joachim Trier was already a familiar name among independent film lovers (thanks to his Oslo trilogy) and Oscar devotees (thanks to his film The Worst Person in the World [Verdens verste menneske] being nominated for Best Original Screenplay in 2022). But it is his sixth film, Sentimental Value (Affeksjonsverdi), that has captured the world’s attention and catapulted him to global recognition and acclaim. Following seven nominations (and one win) at the Golden Globes, Trier has scooped up nine nominations at the Oscars and eight at the BAFTAs – and shone a renewed spotlight on long-snubbed Swedish star Stellan Skarsgård. He co-leads Sentimental Value as filmmaker Gustav, father to estranged adult daughters Nora (Renate Reinsve) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) who he reconnects with after their mother’s death.
Sentimental Value landed in UK cinemas on Boxing Day so it isn’t available to stream just yet – but you can still catch it on the big screen.
Sinners
With 13 nominations at the 2026 BAFTA Film Awards, Ryan Coogler is officially the most-nominated Black director in the awards’ history. Sinners is also the most-nominated film at the Academy Awards, not just in 2026 but of all time. The gothic horror movie is anchored by Best Leading Actor nominee Michael B Jordan in two roles: twin brothers Smoke and Stack, whose plans to open a blue club is curtailed by an evil force lurking beneath the already-grave Jim Crow tensions. Hailee Steinfeld and Brits Delroy Lindo, Jack O’Connell and Wunmi Mosaku also star, the latter bagging a nomination for Best Supporting Actress here and at the Oscars en route.
Sinners is available to rent across streaming platforms.
The 79th BAFTA Film Awards ceremony will return to the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall in London on Sunday 22 February 2026, hosted by Alan Cumming. The ceremony will be broadcast live on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.
