Every winter, film awards fill the headlines. Here is how the voting usually works. From early December to the first weeks of spring, it can feel as if the entire entertainment world is holding its breath. Nominations are announced before dawn. Red carpets roll out in Los Angeles and New York. Pundits publish prediction charts with the intensity of election-night analysts. And millions of viewers settle in to watch long ceremonies in which a handful of envelopes decide which films will be remembered as the best of the year. But who exactly is voting? How do they decide? And why do some films seem to come out of nowhere while others fade after a promising start?
Our awards editor has followed the season for years, and the answers are more interesting, and more human, than most people expect. This guide covers how the major film awards in the United States generally work. Every organization has its own rules, and those rules change from time to time, so think of this as a broad map rather than a rulebook.
Who votes
The first thing to understand is that there is no single awards body. The season is made up of many different groups, each with its own voters and its own personality. Broadly speaking, they fall into a few categories:
- Industry academies. The most prestigious awards are usually voted on by large membership organizations made up of people who work in film: actors, directors, writers, editors, cinematographers and many more.
- Craft guilds. Unions and professional guilds for directors, actors, producers, writers and other crafts hand out their own honors, voted on by their members.
- Critics groups. Associations of film critics in cities around the country announce their picks early in the season, often in December.
- Press organizations. Some awards are voted on by groups of entertainment journalists.
Each of these groups looks at the same pool of films through a slightly different lens. Critics may reward bold, unusual work. Guilds tend to reflect what working professionals admire. Academies, with their huge and varied memberships, often land somewhere in between.
Peers vote for peers
At most major awards, members vote in their own craft branches for nominations. In practice, this means cinematographers nominate cinematographers, editors nominate editors and actors nominate actors. The idea is simple: the people best qualified to judge a craft are the people who practice it.
Once the nominations are set, the rules often change. For many of the biggest awards, the entire membership can vote for the winners in most categories, regardless of their branch. So an editor might help choose the best actor, and an actor might help choose the best sound design. That shift can produce surprises. A film that excites a single branch might earn a nomination, then struggle to win over the wider membership.
How the counting works
Different organizations count votes in different ways. Some simply give the award to whichever nominee receives the most votes. Others, particularly for the top prize, use a ranked or preferential ballot, in which voters list nominees in order of preference. Under that system, the least popular choices are eliminated round by round, and their votes are passed along to each voter’s next choice until one film has a majority.
Ranked voting tends to reward films that are broadly liked rather than films that are passionately loved by some and disliked by others. That is one reason a gentle, warm drama can sometimes beat a bold, divisive masterpiece. Being many voters’ second choice can matter as much as being a few voters’ first.
Awards are a celebration — and a very long marketing campaign.
Our awards editor
Campaigns matter
Studios spend months on screenings and events to win attention. This is the part of awards season most viewers never see, and it is a big part of why some films rise and others are forgotten. Voters are busy working people, and many of them simply cannot see every eligible film. A campaign’s first job is to make sure its film gets watched.
That effort can include special screenings for voters, often followed by a conversation with the director or cast. It can include interviews, magazine features, panel discussions and advertisements in industry publications. Many organizations now also offer secure online screening rooms, so members can watch at home. Campaigns work hard to keep their films in conversation week after week, because a contender that disappears from the headlines in January can be forgotten by the time ballots are due.
Most major organizations have rules about what campaigns can and cannot do, such as limits on gifts and restrictions on contacting voters directly. Those rules exist to keep the focus on the films themselves, though the debate about how much money matters never quite goes away.
The calendar
The awards season follows a rough rhythm that repeats every year. Knowing it helps make sense of the headlines.
- Fall festivals. Many contenders premiere at festivals in late summer and early fall, where early reactions start building buzz.
- Late-year releases. Studios often release their strongest contenders in November and December, when voters are paying close attention.
- Critics’ picks. Critics groups announce their winners in December, offering the first real signals of the season.
- Guild awards. Through January and February, the guilds hand out their honors, which are closely watched as predictors.
- The big nights. The most famous ceremonies wrap up the season in late winter or early spring.
Our awards tracker follows each step in real time, listing nominations and winners across the major groups so you can see how a film’s fortunes rise or fall as the season unfolds.
Why it matters, and why it doesn’t
Awards can change a film’s life. A nomination can send audiences back to theaters, extend a small film’s run or bring it to a streaming service’s front page. For actors and crew members, a win can open doors for years. For smaller films without big marketing budgets, a strong awards season can be the difference between finding an audience and disappearing.
At the same time, awards are not a final verdict on quality. Many beloved classics won nothing at all. Many winners are hard to remember a decade later. Voters are people, with tastes, blind spots and busy schedules, and the results reflect all of that. The best way to enjoy the season is to treat it as a conversation about movies, not a scoreboard.
Key takeaway: Awards are voted on by many groups of professionals, critics and journalists, and the results are shaped by craft branches, ranked ballots and months of campaigning.
Follow along with us
This season, our critics are especially curious to see how “Orbit Nine,” “Saltwater” and “The Quiet Year” perform, and whether “Pip & the Paper Moon” can break through in the main categories rather than only in animation. Follow our awards tracker for every nomination and win, add the big ceremony dates to your calendar from our release page and tell us in the comments which film you are rooting for. Whatever happens on the big nights, the real reward is the conversation, and a long list of great films to watch.
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