This year’s Oscars will include a brand-new category: Who’s up for the award?

(NEXSTAR) – For the first time in more than two decades, the Academy Awards is introducing an all-new competitive category at the Oscars.

Beginning with the 2026 ceremony, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) will recognize Hollywood’s casting directors with its inaugural award for Achievement in Casting, a category the Academy’s Board of Governors approved in 2024.

“Casting directors play an essential role in filmmaking, and as the Academy evolves, we are proud to add casting to the disciplines that we recognize and celebrate,” Academy CEO Bill Kramer and Academy President Janet Yang said in a 2024 joint statement.

At the time, Academy leaders called the addition an “exciting milestone” for the ceremony, which hadn’t added a new competitive category since Best Animated Feature in 2002.

The road to recognition, however, wasn’t a quick one. In the early years of the Hollywood studio system, casting directors were largely overlooked for their efforts to coordinate auditions, scout out talent or even discover new faces. And it wasn’t until 1968 that a casting director would be given an individual on-screen credit during the opening titles of a major motion picture. (Lynn Stalmaster was the first for 1968’s “The Thomas Crown Affair”; Stalwart would later become the first casting director to earn an honorary Oscar in 2016.)

Convincing the AMPAS Board of Directors to finally include a specific casting category was also a years-long process. Speaking with GQ, Kim Taylor-Coleman, a board member from the Academy’s casting branch, remembered putting together a meticulous “case” with the help of supporters across the film industry.

“We put together quite a group of prominent directors and producers, actors, and past Academy presidents, who stood in support of what we do and how integral we are to the filmmaker’s process,” she said.

It probably didn’t hurt that other awards ceremonies, including the Casting Society’s own Artios Awards, were already honoring casting directors. The BAFTAs, too, introduced a Best Casting award in 2019 — a move met with praise from UK casting organizations.

The nominees for the most recent BAFTA for Best Casting also included several of the top contenders for the inaugural Achievement in Casting Oscar, including the casting directors behind “Marty Supreme,” “One Battle After Another” and “Sinners.” But viewers shouldn’t expect the BAFTA winner to predict how the Academy Awards will play out: The casting director of the British film “I Swear,” who is not among the nominees for the Academy’s equivalent award, ended up taking home the prize.

The five nominees for the Academy Award for Achievement in Casting are: Nina Gold, for “Hamnet”; Jennifer Venditti, for “Marty Supreme”; Cassandra Kulukundis, for “One Battle After Another”; Gabriel Domingues, for “The Secret Agent”; and Francine Maisler, for “Sinners.”

No matter who wins, it’s sure to be a “milestone” moment for the industry, just as the Academy said.

“Obviously there were other amazing casting directors who didn’t get recognized,” Gold told NPR, “and this will have to be for a lot of them as well.”

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