In the 98 years that the Academy Awards have been given out, over 2000 awards have been accepted and presented. Just how rare a tie is can be gauged by the fact that only six of these were ties. That was before this year’s edition. When presenter Kumail Nanjiani said, “It’s a tie,” many in the audience were left confused. Nobody knew if that was even possible. But it did. The Best Live-Action Short Film category saw two winners, the first incident of a tie since 2012 and only the seventh since the awards began almost a century ago.
Oscars 2026 sees rare tie
The Best Live-Action Short Film category isn’t one that is expected to dominate headlines at the Academy Awards, but this year, it will be the one talked about the most (provided the rest of the night does not spring too many surprises). Presenter Kumail Nanjiani announced there was a tie. “It’s a tie! I’m not joking! It’s actually a tie, so everyone calm down,” he said. “Hang on, we’re gonna get through this,” the actor added, before explaining that he will announce one winner first, and they will come up to get their award, followed by the second winner.
The Singers and Two People Exchanging Saliva shared the win, and even the recipients were befuddled, with both recipients mentioning they didn’t know Oscars had ties.
The rarity of tied awards at the Academy Awards
Before this, there had been only six instances of awards at the Oscars being tied, going all the way back to 1932, when Wallace Beery (The Champ) and Fredric March (Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde) tiedfor Best Actor. The presentation itself was a farce, with March announced as the solo winner before the mistake was corrected.
In 1950, A Chance to Live and So Much for So Little tied in the Best Documentary Short Subject category. In 1987, Artie Shaw: Time is All You’ve Got and Down and Out in America were joint winners in the Best Documentary Feature. The Best Short Film Live Action (as the category was then called) had a previous tie in 1995, with Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life and Trevor both announced winners. In 2013, Skyfall and Zero Dark Thirty famously won Best Sound Editing.
But the most high-profile occurrence of a tied award was in 1969 when Katharine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand tied for Best Actress. The great Katherine Hepburn won for The Lion in Winter, and Streisand for her iconic turn as Fanny Brice in Funny Girl.
