Every Oscar Tie Ever: The Wild History Leading Up to 2026’s Double Win
It’s a tie!
An unusual – but not unprecedented – moment occurred during Sunday’s Oscars ceremony when presenter Kumail Nanjiani announced there were two winners in the live action short film category.
“It’s a tie. I’m not joking. It’s actually a tie,” the comedian said. “So everyone calm down, and we’re going to get through this.”
A rare tie at the 98th Academy Awards
Nanjiani then revealed the two winners individually. First, the team behind The Singers came to the stage to accept the award. Next up were the creators of the French-language film Two People Exchanging Saliva.
“Ironic that the short film Oscar is going to take twice as long,” The Eternals star quipped in between the acceptance speeches.
“I just want to say congratulations to both winners: You just ruined 22 million Oscar pools,” joked host Conan O’Brien after both awards were handed out.
Barbra Streisand and Katharine Hepburn shared the best actress award in 1969
The tie at the 98th Academy Awards was just the seventh in the award show’s history.
The first Oscars tie happened in 1932. That year, both Wallace Beery and Fredric March won best actor, for their roles in The Champ and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, respectively.
In 1949, a tie in the best documentary short category meant that both A Chance to Live and So Much for So Little went home with trophies.
Perhaps the most famous instance of dual Oscars occurred in the best actress category in 1969. That year, Katharine Hepburn won her third Oscar for her role as Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter. She’d also won in 1967 for Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. Meanwhile, Barbra Streisand took home her first award for Funny Girl, her film debut.
The Hepburn-Streisand win was notable for being a true tie, with each receiving 3,030 votes. At the 1932 Oscars, March actually received one more vote than Beery. However, Academy rules at the time said that if any nominee came within three votes of winning, the result would be considered a tie, according to History.com.
Streisand might have benefited from a controversial decision to admit her to the Academy before her first feature film was even released, noted The Hollywood Reporter. That meant she was a voting member and could have cast the tie-breaking vote for herself. (Streisand has never confirmed that she voted for herself.)
Three other ties have occurred in Oscar history. In 1986, Artie Shaw: Time Is All You’ve Got and Down and Out in America both won for best documentary feature. The 1994 ceremony featured a tie in the best live action short tie between Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life and Trevor. That makes live action short the only category where a tie has occurred twice. And in 2012, Skyfall and Zero Dark Thirty shared the award for best sound editing.
Want to watch this year’s two live action short Oscar winners? You can stream The Singers on Netflix. Two People Exchanging Saliva is streaming on YouTube.
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