Oscar Ratings Fall 9% From Last Year With 17.9 Million Viewers

The 2026 Oscars saw viewership tick down 9% from last year.

Initial numbers place the 98th Academy Awards at 17.86 million viewers across ABC and Hulu, according to Nielsen live-plus-same-day figures. That’s down 9% from last year’s awards ceremony, which brought in 19.69 million viewers as it broadcast on ABC and streamed live on Hulu.

The 2026 show ends the year-over-year growth the Academy Awards have seen over the past several years, with viewership for the 2025 show up a slight 1% from the 19.5 million viewers brought in by the 2024 show, scoring the biggest audience the awards show has seen in five years. For reference, the 2023 show scored 18.8 million viewers, while the 2022 show brought in 16.7 million viewers.

Still, the show scored a 3.92 rating among adults 18-49, boosting it to become the No. 1 primetime entertainment telecast of the 2025-2026 season. As usual, the Oscars maintained their dominance over the other awards shows, outpacing the 14.41 million viewers brought in by the Grammys and 8.66 million viewers brought in by the Golden Globes, with both shows dipping year-over-year.

The Oscars were also dominant on social media, with Sunday’s show becoming the No. 1 most social program of the night. Social impressions for the Oscars hit over 184 million, up 42.4% from last year, with audience growth on Academy social platforms hitting 21.6 million over last year’s 19.7 million last year impressions. Overall, the Academy social platforms saw over 129 million video views throughout the night.

Notably, the 2026 show marks the third-to-last Oscars that will have its broadcast home on ABC, with the Academy Awards set to head to YouTube beginning with the 101st Oscars in 2029. It’s also the third year that the Oscars began at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT in place of its previous 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT start time.

Sunday’s show saw major wins for Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” and Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners,” including Michael B. Jordan’s best actor win — making him the second actor to win an Oscar for playing twins — as well as a historic win for Autumn Durald Arkapaw, the first woman to win for cinematography.

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