It wouldn’t be an awards season without a few shocks and snubs, and the 2026 Golden Globes nominations have no shortage of surprises. Taking place in January, the Globes are generally a more low-key and boozy affair than most other awards shows, a party to kick off the glitzy season after the critics' circles have handed out their year-end gongs. It has always been an idiosyncratic beast, and that also goes for who gets nominated.
For a long time, the Globes were voted on by the HFPA, a group of roughly 90 hacks that nobody had ever heard of (as opposed to the literal thousands of people in the Academy), which meant that a well-targeted campaign of shmoozing could win you a nomination at a fraction of the cost of running for an Oscar. Now, having expanded its voting members to around 310 international journalists in 2023, we’re starting to see a new kind of Globes emerge—an award show with a genuinely more global feel.
This is particularly evident in this year’s selection, with festival favourites taking up spots usually reserved for major US releases—even though two great American movies (Sinners with seven, One Battle After Another with nine) lead the pack alongside Norway’s Sentimental Value (eight). Read on to discover more and use the guide below to find out where to watch the movies, whether in theatres or on services like AppleTV, Netflix, Prime Video and elsewhere.
SNUB: Wicked: For Good Misses Out on a Best Picture Nod
Wicked: For Good is exactly the kind of big screen popcorn movie that used to be a dead cert for the Globes (think The Greatest Showman, Rocketman), an awards ceremony that splits many of its categories into either Drama or Musical/Comedy—meaning twice the noms. That bifurcation has meant that, given the reluctance to award actual comedy movies, basically any half-decent musical was usually guaranteed at least a mention—but perhaps not anymore.
Wicked: For Good predictably saw nominations for its two actresses (Grande has a good shot of winning) and a couple of songs, but will only be in contention for the still vague “Cinematic and Box Office Achievement" award, which its predecessor, Wicked, won while losing Best Picture Musical/Comedy to Emilia Perez.
SHOCK: Indie & International Movies Get Huge Globes Recognition
Where movies like Wicked: For Good missed out, international and independents won big.
Jafar Panahi (Iran), Joachim Trier (Norway) and Kleber Mendonça Filho (Brazil) all had their movies nominated for Best Drama (It Was Just and Accident, Sentimental Value, The Secret Agent) while in the Musical/Comedy category, Korean filmmaker Park Chan Wook’s No Other Choice was nominated alongside Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos’s Bugonia and four films from American indie royalty: PTA’s One Battle After Another, Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme, as well as Nouvelle Vague and Blue Moon—both of which were directed by Richard Linklater.
The weird part is that not one of the six movies in that category is a musical, nor, with the possible exception of Nouvelle, do I think any of these directors would refer to them as comedies. We are used to seeing a little category shenanigans at the Globes (remember The Martian, The Wolf of Wall Street?), but this is a whole new level.
SNUB: Sydney Sweeney Punches Out Of Acting Categories
Given Euphoria breakout Sydney Sweeney’s magnetic ability to court controversy online, it’s probably not so surprising that the actor failed to make the cut in yesterday’s nominations for either The Housemaid or her more awards-friendly role as the pioneering female boxer Christy Martin in Christy.
This is the kind of part that requires an actor to undergo a physical transformation (think Monster, or to a lesser extent, I, Tonya), so Sweeney must have been quietly hoping for at least a nod from the Globes when she took it on. Unfortunately for her, the movie didn’t make a huge impression with critics and has struggled at the box office—maybe it’s time for a rebrand?
SHOCK: Jacob Elordi Is Nominated For Not One, But TWO Golden Globes
Sweeney can perhaps take some pleasure in seeing her fellow Euphoria alum Jacob Elordi pick up not one but two nominations yesterday. The Australian heartthrob first got a nod for his role in the TV drama Narrow Road to the Deep North (a POW story that fans of Atonement might enjoy) before receiving a shock Best Supporting Actor nom for his role as the Creature in Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein (a film for fans of The Shape of Water, naturally).
As of today, the awards boffins at Gold Derby have the actor down for a nomination at the Oscars. He’s alive!
SNUB: Katheryn Bigelow Fails to Make An Impact at the Globes
Since becoming the first woman to win Best Director at the Oscars for The Hurt Locker in 2010, Katheryn Bigelow’s name has naturally stayed in the conversation for this category. She was back in 2013 with Zero Dark Thirty, but just missed out with Detroit a few years later. Now, with House of Dynamite, her first film in eight years, the director (and the execs at Netflix) must have been hoping for a comeback. But despite a lot of buzz from Venice, the film has failed to really ignite upon impact.
In truth, the Best Director category was always going to be a knife fight this year, and with Chloe Zhao already a lock for Hamnet alongside a selection of international names, you won’t find too many people arguing about a lack of diversity.
SHOCK: 2026 Is a Cool Year For Score and Song at the Globes
Whenever I watch an Oscar ceremony (as I now do every year, without fail) and it comes time to hear the performances for Original Song, my mind imagines what it was like in 1996, when Colour of the Wind (Pocahontas) beat out You’ve Got a Friend in Me (Toy Story) for the prize.
Thanks to an interesting selection of tunes, I might not need to daydream this year. The category for Best Original Song this year includes I Lied to You from Sinners (great), two tunes from Wicked: For Good (inevitable), one from KPop Demon Hunters (fun) and, best of all, a Nick Cave tune from Train Dreams (dreamy).
This unusual level of good taste is also present in the nominations for Best Score, where names of maestros Hans Zimmer (F1), Alexandre Desplat (Frankenstein), Ludwig Goranson (Sinners) and Max Richter (Hamnet) will be said in the same breath as Radiohead’s Johnny Greenwood (One Battle) and the Berlin-based techno DJ Kanding Ray (for the miraculous Spanish movie Sirāt).
SNUB: No Nomination For The Pitt’s Katherine LaNasa
Viewers on the lookout for shenanigans could find plenty in the TV acting noms, where there was no love for The Gilded Age and not enough for The Pitt, while the weakest season of White Lotus absolutely cleaned up. The most egregious snub was surely for Katherine LaNasa’s supporting turn as nurse Dana Evans in The Pitt, a category where no less than three Lotus actors were nominated.
Nothing against those performances, of course, but LaNasa was the heart and soul of the exceptional ER-set drama. That scene where she attempts to make a cup of tea while shellshocked in one of the last few episodes is honestly one of the best things I’ve seen all year.
SHOCK: What Is Going on in Best Cinematic and Box Office Achievement?
In truth, when this category was announced last year, it already seemed like a terrible idea. Sure, it’s an opportunity to recognise popcorn movies that never get nominated elsewhere, but aren’t all these nominees defined as “cinematic achievements”? And like Don said in that now ubiquitous meme, isn’t that what the money is for?
Either way, all kinds of funny stuff seems to be going on in the category this year, including nods for the yet to be released Avatar: Fire & Ash and the Netflix-streaming movie KPop Demon Hunters—both of which were recognised instead of six of the actual top seven highest-grossing movies of the year, including Superman and The Minecraft Movie.
SNUB: Sinners’ Wunmi Mosaku Should Have Been Nominated
The electric Nigerian-British star Wunmi Mosaku was a standout in Ryan Coogler’s Sinners earlier this year (a miraculous vampire mashup movie that fans of From Dusk Till Dawn will love), but sadly didn’t make the cut with the Globe voters. The movie did get nominated for seven awards, though, including Michael B. Jordan for his dual role as the Smokestack twins.
It was also the only film nominated in both the Box Office and Best Picture categories—no mean feat.
SHOCK: Sorry, Baby’s Eve Victor Is (Rightfully) a Best Actress Nominee
Though many missed out, there were heartwarming decisions in other places, not least a first nomination for Rhea Seahorn for the excellent Pluribus after years of being overlooked by the Globes for her work on Better Call Saul. The most delightful, however, has to be Eva Victor’s nod for Best Actress for her incredible turn in Sorry, Baby—a deeply personal movie that Victor (who identifies as non-binary) also wrote and directed.
Victor’s categorisation in the drama category is not necessarily off, but the film is certainly more of a comedy than If I Had Legs I’d Kick You or One Battle After Another, both of which have their leading actresses (Rose Byrne and Chase Infiniti) nominated in that other category. Whatever the case, this awards season just got a lot more interesting.
