Oscars 2025: Read the Live Updates

After a relatively tumultuous awards season, with scheduling delays caused by the devastating L.A. wildfires and frontrunners marred by controversy, the 97th Academy Awards have finally arrived. Hosted by Conan O’Brien, the ceremony has the potential for more surprises than last year’s Oppenheimer-dominated night, with a comparatively open Best Picture race and some photo-finish lead acting races between Demi Moore and Fernanda Torres and Adrien Brody and Timothée Chalamet. TIME staffers will be watching live and providing updates and analysis in our live blog.

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Follow along for the winners, losers, and biggest moments of Oscar Sunday.

The most exciting award to watch

This is the rare year with a Best Picture race that’s totally up in the air. Emilia Pérez seemed to be leading the pack after winning Best Picture – Musical or Comedy at the Golden Globes. But scandal beset that film after a journalist uncovered star Karla Sofia Gascón’s history of sending wildly racist tweets.

So what will win? The Brutalist won the Golden Globe for Best Picture – Drama but is a polarizing film that has struggled with its own controversy involving the use of AI. Anora won several recent awards, though naysayers think that dramedy set largely in a strip club might prove too scandalous for some Academy voters. A Complete Unknown checks many of the traditional Oscar boxes: a biopic starring an actor who taught himself a new skill (how to sing) helmed by an oft-nominated director in James Mangold. Conclave is a crowd-pleaser. The Academy employs ranked choice voting, so the real question we should be asking may be: What is the second most popular film among Academy members? It’s anyone’s guess.—Eliana Dockterman

How voting works for the Oscars

According to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Oscars’ 23 categories are voted on by that body’s more than 10,500 members in a democratic process.

In the first round of voting, members vote to narrow down nominations, and oftentimes categories are only voted on by voting members of a specific corresponding branch—the actors branch votes for actor categories, the directors branch votes for director categories, and so on. Some categories may be available to all members. In the final round of the voting process, though, all Academy members can vote in all 23 categories.

Voting occurs in rounds through a secret online ballot tabulated by an independent accounting firm hired by the Academy. Most awards are pretty simple: whatever gets the most votes, wins. For the coveted Best Picture category, though, voting is slightly different. Eligible voters rank the nominees from their favorite to their least favorite, and whichever movie gets 50 percent or more of the votes is the winner. The Academy changed their Best Picture voting to this ranked choice system back in 2009, at the same time they increased the number of nominees in that category to as many as 10 films.

For the 2025 Oscars, preliminary voting ran from Dec. 9, 2024 until Dec. 13, 2024 and nominations voting was supposed to run from Jan. 8, 2025 to Jan. 12, 2025, but was extended to Jan. 17 due to the L.A. wildfires. The final round of voting began on Feb. 11 and ended on Feb. 18, meaning ceremonies that took place later, like the SAG Awards, didn’t impact voters’ choices.—Rebecca Schneid

Conan O’Brien will host tonight

For the first time, Conan O’Brien is hosting the Academy Awards. The comedian is following in the footsteps of fellow late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, who has hosted the Oscars four times, including in 2023 and 2024.

“This is incredible. I’ve been handed an Oscar. I’m an Oscar winner,” O’Brien said in a video posted to the Academy’s X account announcing that the organization had tapped the comedian for the job. Someone off-screen then takes the Oscar from his hands and reminds him that he’s hosting the awards, not winning one. Still, he asked: “Oh, but do I still get to keep the Oscar?”

O’Brien hosted late-night talk shows for more than two decades, winning awards for Late Night with Conan O’Brien, The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien and Conan. The five-time Emmy winner was also a writer for Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons.

O’Brien left late night in 2021, and since then has been hosting his podcast “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend.”

“So I did an independent film at Sundance. I headlined at the Newport Folk Festival. I’m just saying yes to things that I wouldn’t have done before,” he told ABC ahead of his big hosting night. “I’m a black belt in karate now. I’m a licensed neurosurgeon. I mean, there are all these things I’m doing now that I didn’t think I would ever do before.”—Rebecca Schneid

How to watch the Oscars

The 97th Oscars broadcast, like last year’s ceremony, will start a bit earlier than the show used to: 7 p.m. EST/4 p.m. PST. You can watch the Oscars on cable with a local ABC station or stream via Hulu (for the first time), Youtube TV, Fubo TV or AT&T TV.

The red carpet starts earlier, as well, at 3:30 p.m. EST/12:30 p.m. PST, and can be streamed at ABC’s On The Red Carpet’s website, Facebook, and Youtube pages.—Rebecca Schneid

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