Oscars 2025: How Are Academy Award Winners Selected? Understanding the Voting Process

Ever wondered how the Academy Award winners are decided? Read on to know the voting process in a nutshell as Oscars 2025 approaches.

Written by Ipshita Chakraborty , Entertainment Journalist

Updated on Mar 01, 2025 | 02:05 PM IST | 10.5K

CC: Getty Images

Oscars 2025 is almost here. And the winner is... selected by an intricate yet smooth voting process that involves multiple confidential steps.

The 97th Academy Awards will entertain movie fans on March 2, 2025. The Academy consists of more than ten thousand members in 19 different branches.

Voting for the Oscar winners starts five days prior to the actual ceremony. Although each branch votes within its field, each member can vote for Best Picture.

Submissions by studios or production companies lead to the nomination process, with a guarantee that movies qualify under certain eligibility conditions, including a qualifying theatrical release.

The voting process occurs in several steps. Once members submit their nominations, the highest-voted contenders become the announced nominees. Then the final voting occurs, where members vote to choose winners for all categories.

Counting the final votes falls upon PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), with them sending the sealed envelopes directly to the event. The award presenters receive the envelopes on stage before announcing the winners to make sure no one knows the results ahead of time.

Voting takes place online in the days preceding the ceremony. The majority of categories have a simple format—the nominee with the highest number of votes wins. Best Picture, however, uses a ranked-choice system.

Voters list nominees as a preference, and if no movie receives more than 50% of first-choice votes in the first round, the lowest-ranked film is dropped, redistributing the votes until one is left.

According to the Academy, via their official website, "All eligible Academy members participate in Oscars voting. Best Picture nominations are determined by eligible members from all 19 Academy branches. In other categories, the nominations are determined by members of a specific branch or voters who meet eligibility requirements. All rounds of Oscar voting are done by secret online ballot tabulated by the independent accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers."

The Academy has also made efforts to diversify its membership, especially following previous criticism of insufficient representation. New members are brought in every year, expanding the minds behind Oscar choices. Celebs such as Idris Elba, America Ferrera, Black Panther director Ryan Coogler, Lily Gladstone, Teo Yoo, and more have been a part of the voting committee.

Spanish musical Emilia Pérez topped the list this year with 13 nominations, followed by The Brutalist and Wicked with 10 each, which guarantees an electrifying contest on Hollywood's most important night.