The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has fixed the dates for its 99th and 100th Oscars ceremonies, putting the next two editions of Hollywood’s highest-profile awards show on the calendar while underscoring that a major distribution shift is now approaching.
The 99th Academy Awards are scheduled for March 14, 2027, while the 100th Oscars, a landmark centennial ceremony for the film academy’s signature event, are set for March 5, 2028. Both shows are planned to air live on ABC at 7 p.m. Eastern and to be staged from the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood, continuing a long-running arrangement that has tied the Oscars to broadcast television and to one of the most recognizable venues in the entertainment industry.
The dates, announced jointly by the Academy and ABC, might look routine on the surface. But in practical terms they carry more weight than a standard scheduling update. They confirm the timetable for the final two Oscar ceremonies before the awards leave their longtime domestic television home and move into a new media era beginning in 2029.
That looming transition has become one of the most consequential structural changes in the modern history of the Oscars. Under a deal unveiled by the Academy in December 2025, YouTube will receive exclusive global rights to the Oscars starting in 2029 with the 101st Academy Awards, with the agreement running through 2033. The partnership will also cover other Academy programming, including nomination announcements, red-carpet content, behind-the-scenes access and additional year-round events tied to the institution’s broader film culture strategy.
For decades, the Oscars have been one of the defining fixtures of appointment television in the United States, an annual live event that combined glamour, industry politics, celebrity spectacle and national ratings pressure in a single night. Even as viewing habits fragmented and audiences moved toward streaming, clips, and on-demand consumption, the show remained symbolically linked to the broadcast era. The new calendar for 2027 and 2028 therefore does more than identify the next ceremony dates. It effectively marks the closing stretch of the Oscars’ ABC chapter.
The Academy has framed the coming change less as a retreat from tradition than as an attempt to expand the reach of the awards globally and adapt to how viewers increasingly consume live entertainment. YouTube, with its vast international footprint and built-in digital infrastructure, offers the possibility of a more direct relationship with audiences across markets, devices and languages. Academy leaders have said the arrangement is designed to make the Oscars more accessible to film fans worldwide while also giving the organization a year-round digital home for related programming.
Still, the symbolism of the shift is hard to miss. When the 99th Oscars take place in March 2027, they will arrive not only as another awards-season climax but as one of the final ceremonies in a format that many viewers still associate with classic Hollywood prestige. By the time the 100th Oscars are presented in March 2028, the event will carry the added significance of being both a centenary milestone and the last Academy Awards ceremony under the Academy’s current domestic partnership with Disney’s ABC.
That gives the next two years an unusual dual identity. On one level, they remain ordinary competitive awards seasons in which studios will campaign intensely, awards strategists will map release calendars, and Academy voters will again weigh prestige dramas, global cinema, star vehicles, auteur projects and box-office successes. On another, they will be read as transitional ceremonies, the final installments before the Oscars step fully into an all-digital distribution future.
The Academy’s announcement also included key dates for the 2026 awards season, laying out the procedural timeline that leads to the 99th Oscars. The eligibility period for qualifying films begins on January 1, 2026, and ends on December 31, 2026. Shortlists are due to be announced on December 15, 2026. Nominations voting is scheduled to begin on January 11, 2027, and end on January 15, 2027, with the Oscar nominations set to be revealed on January 21, 2027. Final voting then opens on February 25 and closes on March 4, 2027, ten days before the ceremony itself.
Those milestones matter because the Oscars are not a single-night event in industry terms; they are the culmination of a months-long calendar that influences film releases, awards campaigns, festival strategies and theatrical rollout decisions. By releasing the dates well in advance, the Academy gives studios, distributors, guilds, marketers and publicists an essential framework around which the next awards cycle can be built.
The 2028 ceremony may prove especially charged. Anniversary editions of major cultural institutions often invite a mixture of nostalgia, self-assessment and image management, and the 100th Oscars will almost certainly be no exception. The Academy is likely to use that ceremony not only to honor the year’s films but also to reflect on a century of Oscar history, a narrative that includes both the glamour of Hollywood mythology and the criticism that has trailed the institution on questions of race, representation, global relevance, voting practices and the changing economics of theatrical filmmaking.
That centennial milestone also comes at a moment when the film industry itself is still recalibrating after years of disruption. The rise of streaming platforms, shifting theatrical windows, labor unrest, franchise fatigue, international box-office dependencies and the ongoing debate over what constitutes a “movie event” have all changed the commercial and cultural terrain in which the Oscars operate. In that sense, the Academy’s move to YouTube is part of a larger media realignment rather than an isolated decision.
For ABC, the end of the current arrangement closes a significant chapter in entertainment broadcasting. The network has long relied on the Oscars as one of the few remaining live event telecasts capable of drawing large audiences, advertiser attention and next-day cultural conversation. Ratings for awards shows have become more volatile in recent years, but the Oscars still carry status that far exceeds their raw overnight numbers. Losing them after 2028 is therefore both a business change and a symbolic one for broadcast television.
For the Academy, the challenge is different. Moving to YouTube offers scale and flexibility, but it also raises questions about how the Oscars will preserve the sense of occasion that traditional network television once guaranteed. The Academy will need to persuade viewers, filmmakers and advertisers that the ceremony can remain prestigious while becoming more digitally native, more global and potentially more interactive.
That balancing act begins before the platform handover. The 99th and 100th Oscars will now be watched not only for who wins, but for what they represent: the closing phase of one media era and the dress rehearsal for the next. By locking in March 14, 2027, and March 5, 2028, the Academy has effectively put two markers on the timeline of its own reinvention.
Hollywood awards shows often present themselves as timeless rituals. In reality, they evolve with the industries, technologies and audiences around them. The newly announced dates make clear that the Oscars are entering one of those moments of reinvention again. The next two ceremonies will preserve the familiar setting — ABC, the Dolby Theatre, a live Sunday-night showcase — even as the institution prepares to leave that model behind.
For now, the message from the Academy is simple: the countdown to the 99th and 100th Oscars has begun. Beneath that straightforward announcement, however, sits a more consequential truth. These are not just the next two Academy Awards. They are the final two before one of the most storied events in entertainment changes homes, changes distribution, and tries to redefine how a global film audience gathers to watch.
