2026 Independent Spirit Awards Winners List (Updating Live)

The 41st Film Independent Spirit Awards are underway in Hollywood. Comedian Ego Nwodim is hosting the annual celebration of lower-budget movies and the moxie of non-studio filmmaking.

As the show began, early awards were presented by current Oscar nominees. Amy Madigan (“Weapons”) gave the Best Screenplay prize to Eva Victor for “Sorry Baby” and Rose Byrne (“If I Had Legs I’d Kick You'”) handed Best Documentary to “The Perfect Neighbor.”

Eligible films must have budgets lower than $28 million, disqualifying most of the Oscar frontrunners such as “Sinners,” “One Battle After Another,” “Marty Supreme,” “Frankenstein” and “Hamnet.” The only Best Picture Oscar nominee to make the Spirit Awards Best Feature lineup, in fact, was “Train Dreams.”

Ira Sachs’ drama “Peter Hujar’s Day,” starring Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall, leads the Spirit Award lineup with five nominations, followed by “Blue Sun Palace,” “Lurker,” “One of Them Days,” “Sorry, Baby” and “Train Dreams” with four.

The lineup reflects a year with surprisingly little crossover between the Spirt Awards and the Oscars, a big change from last year’s ceremony when “Anora” won awards for Best Feature, Director and Leading Performance on its path to win the same prizes at the Oscars. Likewise, Kieran Culkin’s Spirit Award for “A Real Pain” was a precursor to his Oscar win.

But in the genderless acting categories here, only Byrne (“If I Had Legs I’d Kick You”) scored a nomination at the Oscars, compared to six duel nominees last year.

For several decades, since the first Spirit Awards in 1985, the ceremony was held on the day before the Oscars. The date has been moved earlier in recent years, with this 2026 awards show being held exactly one month before the Academy Awards on March 15.

Indie Spirit voters are a mixture of film professionals and fans who pay to participate, and they didn’t always focus on the same films as the Motion Picture Academy. In the first two and a half decades after the awards were launched in 1985, the Film Independent Spirit Awards prided themselves on being an alternative to the Oscars: They were the show that would give the top award to movies like “After Hours,” “Sex, Lies and Videotape” and “Election,” movies that would never be nominated for Best Picture by the Academy. And later, they would go with “Brokeback Mountain” over “Crash,” “Little Miss Sunshine” instead of “The Departed,” “Black Swan” instead of “The King’s Speech.”

But about 12 years ago, the Oscars began to get more indie and the two organizations began to regularly match, beginning with “The Artist” in 2012, followed two years later by a four-year streak in which the Indie Spirits predicted the Oscar winner with “12 Years a Slave” in 2015, “Birdman” in 2016, “Spotlight” in 2017 and “Moonlight” in 2018.

Since then, Indie Spirit voters have tended to go for likely Oscar winners like “Nomadland,” “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and last year’s “Anora,” which won best picture, director and lead performance.

Because of construction in Santa Monica related to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, this year’s ceremony was moved from its usual location in a tent near the beach to the Hollywood Palladium.

Here is the complete list of nominees. Winners are indicated by *WINNER.

BEST FEATURE  (Award given to the producer) 
“Peter Hujar’s Day”
“The Plague”
“Sorry, Baby”
“Train Dreams”
“Twinless”

BEST FIRST FEATURE (Award given to director and producer)
“Blue Sun Palace”
“Dust Bunny”
“East of Wall”
“Lurker”
“One of Them Days”

BEST DIRECTOR
Clint Bentley, “Train Dreams”
Mary Bronstein, “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You”
Lloyd Lee Choi, “Lucky Lou”
Ira Sachs, “Peter Hujar’s Day”
Eva Victor, “Sorry Baby”

BEST SCREENPLAY
“A Little Prayer”
“Sorry, Baby” *WINNER
“Sovereign”
“Splitsville”
“Twinless”

BEST FIRST SCREENPLAY
“Blue Sun Palace”
“Friendship”
“Lurker”
“One of Them Days”
“Outerlands”

BEST LEAD PERFORMANCE
Everett Blunck, “The Plague”
Rose Byrne, “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You”
Kathleen Chalfant, “Familiar Touch”
Chang Chen, “Lucky Lu”
Joel Edgerton, “Train Dreams”
Dylan O’Brien, “Twinless”
Keke Palmer, “One of Them Days”
Théodore Pellerin, “Lurker”
Tessa Thompson, “Hedda”
Ben Whishaw, “Peter Hujar’s Day”

BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE
Naomi Ackie, “Sorry, Baby”
Zoey Deutch, “Nouvelle Vague”
Kirsten Dunst, “Roofman”
Rebecca Hall, “Peter Hujar’s Day”
Nina Hoss, “Hedda”
Jane Levy, “A Little Prayer”
Archie Madekwe, “Lurker”
Kali Reis, “Rebuilding”
Jacob Tremblay, “Sovereign”
Haipeng Xu, “Blue Sun Palace”

BEST BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMANCE
Liz Larson, “The Baltimorons”
Kayo Martin, “The Plague”
Misha Osherovich, “She’s the He”
SZA, “One of Them Days”
Tabatha Zimiga, “East of Wall”

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
“Blue Sun Palace”
“Dust Bunny”
“Peter Hujar’s Day”
“Train Dreams”
“Warfare”

BEST EDITING
“Eephus”
“Good Boy”
“Splitsville”
“The Testament of Ann Lee”
“Warfare”

JOHN CASSAVETES AWARD
“The Baltimorons”
“Boys Go to Jupiter”
“Eephus”
“Esta Isla (This Island)”
“Familiar Touch”

ROBERT ALTMAN AWARD  (Given to one film’s director, casting director, and ensemble cast)
“The Long Walk” — director Francis Lawrence, casting director Rich Delia, ensemble cast Judy Greer, Mark Hamill, Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Tut Nyuot, Joshua Odjick, Charlie Plummer, Ben Wang, Garrett Wareing

BEST DOCUMENTARY (Award given to the director and producer)
“Come See Me in the Good Light”
“Endless Cookie”
“My Undesirable Friends: Part 1 – Last Air in Moscow”
“The Perfect Neighbor” *WINNER
“The Tale of Silyan”

BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM (Award given to the director)
“All That’s Left of You”
“On Becoming a Guinea Fowl”
“A Poet”
“The Secret Agent”
“Sirat”

PRODUCERS AWARD  (Honors emerging producers who, despite highly limited resources, demonstrate the creativity, tenacity, and vision required to produce quality independent films)

Emma Hannaway
Luca Intili
Tony Yang *WINNER

SOMEONE TO WATCH AWARD  (Recognizes a talented filmmaker of singular vision who has not yet received appropriate recognition)

Tatti Ribeiro, director of “Valentina” *WINNER
Neo Sora, director of “Happyend”
Annapurna Sriram, director of “Fucktoys”

TRUER THAN FICTION AWARD  (Presented to an emerging director of non-fiction features who has not yet received significant recognition)

Tony Benna, director of “Andre Is an Idiot”
Rajee Samarasinghe, Director of “Your Touch Makes Others Invisible” *WINNER
Brittany Shyne, Director of “Seeds”

BEST NEW NON-SCRIPTED OR DOCUMENTARY SERIES (Award given to the Creator, Executive Producer, Co-Executive Producer)

“Citizen Nation”
“Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time”
“Pee-Wee as Himself” 
“Seen & Heard: The History of Black Television”
“Vow of Silence: The Assassination of Annie Mae”

BEST NEW SCRIPTED SERIES (Award given to the Creator, Executive Producer, Co-Executive Producer)
“Adolescence” 
“Common Side Effect”
“Forever”
“Mr. Loverman”
“North of North”

BEST LEAD PERFORMANCE IN A NEW SCRIPTED SERIES
Sydney Chandler, “Alien: Earth”
Stephen Graham, “Adolescence”
Ethan Hawke, “The Lowdown”
Lennie James, “Mr. Loverman”
Anna Lambe, “North of North”
Lola Petticrew, “Say Nothing”
Seth Rogen, “The Studio”
Lovie Simone, “Forever”
Michelle Williams, “Dying for Sex”
Noah Wyle, “The Pitt”

BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE IN A NEW SCRIPTED SERIES
Ariyon Bakare – “Mr Loverman”
Babou Ceesay – “Alien: Earth”
Sharon D. Clarke – “Mr Loverman”
Taylor Dearden – “The Pitt”
Erin Doherty – “Adolescence”
Stephen McKinley Henderson – “A Man on the Inside”
Poorna Jagannathan – “Deli Boys”
Xosha Roquemore – “Forever”
Jenny Slate – “Dying for Sex”
Ben Whishaw – “Black Doves”

BEST BREAKTRHOUGH PERFORMANCE IN A NEW SCRIPTED SERIES
Asif Ali, “Deli Boys”
Wally Baram, “Overcompensating”
Owen Cooper, “Adolescence”
Michael Cooper Jr., “Forever”
Ernest Kingsley Junior, “Washington Black”

BEST ENSEMBLE CAST IN A NEW SCRIPTED SERIES
“Chief of War”
Charlie Brumbly, Luciane Buchanan, Cliff Curtis, Brandon Finn, Moses Goods, Te Ao o Hinepehinga, Benjamin Hoetjes, Siua Ikale’o, Keala Kahuanui-Paleka, Mainei Kinimaka, Kaina Makua, Jason Momoa, Temuera Morrison, Te Kohe Tuhaka, James Udom

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