The Oscars 2026 Winners Included A Tie In The Best Live-Action Short Category
Before the weekend, there had only ever been six ties at the Oscars.
However, on Sunday night, movie history was made when a seventh occurred.
During this year’s ceremony, Marvel star Kumail Nanjiani was welcomed to the stage to announce the winner in the Best Live Action Short category.
After opening the envelope, he revealed that two of the nominees had received the same number of votes from Academy members, meaning they’d each be awarded an Oscar.
“It’s a tie!” he exclaimed, before assuring the audience: “I’m not joking! It’s actually a tie, so everyone calm down!”
Kumail Nanjiani reveals there’s been a tie at the #Oscars while announcing Best Live Action Short, with “The Singers” and “Two People Exchanging Saliva” sharing the award.
— Variety (@Variety) March 16, 2026
(via ABC/AMPAS) pic.twitter.com/sl2ugEnYfA
He then explained that he’d be announcing the winners one at a time, first welcoming the producers of The Singers to the stage before the crew behind Two People Exchanging Saliva collected theirs.
Uncomfortably, during the latter, the Oscars team attempted to cut the team’s acceptance speech short, before the night’s host Conan O’Brien then encouraged them to continue.
"I know we're tight, but to retract a microphone on a man while he's speaking... is hilarious"—Conan O'Brien at the Oscars pic.twitter.com/mmiTPE1RFZ
— LateNighter (@latenightercom) March 16, 2026
The Oscars’ most famous tie came in 1969, when screen icon Katharine Hepburn and then-newcomer Barbra Streisand split the win for Best Actress for their performances in The Lion In Winter and Funny Girl.
Back in 1932, the first tie at the Oscars came during the awards show’s fifth year, when Fredric March and Wallace Beery were both named Best Actor.
Technically, the former had received one more vote than the latter, but at this time, a rule was in place meaning that anyone within three votes of the winner would also receive an award.
So Much For So Little and A Chance To Live then split Best Documentary Short in 1950, while a similar draw occurred 37 years later when the features Artie Shaw: Time Is All You’ve Got and Down And Out In America got the same number of votes in the Best Documentary Feature category.
Trevor and Franz Kafka’s It’s A Wonderful Life were the two winners in the Best Live-Action Short category in the mid-1990s, while the latest tie was just over a decade ago, in 2013, with Zero Dark Thirty and Skyfall winning Best Sound Editing.
Check out the full list of winners from the 2026 Oscars here.