2026 Fall Film Festivals scorecard and Oscar contenders

As the Venice, Toronto, and New York film festivals unveil their lineups, the fall festival circuit is coming into focus. Telluride remains the one wild card, with that event’s list of movies safely guarded until right before crowds descend on the quiet Colorado mountain town — not to be confused with that other quiet mountain town in the Centennial State. But with most of the calendar set, the awards battlefield is drawn.

Two notable facts about this season off the top. First, only one movie is expected to play all four festivals. That would be Werner Herzog’s Bucking Fastard starring sisters Kate and Rooney Mara. It’s the Oscar-nominated director’s first narrative feature since 2019, and is currently seeking U.S. distribution. And second, not one of the five remaining Hollywood legacy studios — Disney, Paramount, Sony, Universal, and Warner Bros. — is expected to any of their non-specialty label awards season contenders on the road.

Read on for Gold Derby’s look at where the top contenders are landing, who has the most momentum — and which heavyweights are skipping the festival circuit entirely. (Looking at you, Tom Cruise.)

Venice Film Festival (Sept. 2-12)

Danny Boyle’s Ink kicks things off as the festival’s opening night film, while Casey Affleck’s Company, Lee Chang-Dong’s Possible Love, Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine, Hirokazu Koreeda’s Look Back, Lance Oppenheim’s Primetime, and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s Everest: The Other Side give the competition and broader Venice program a strong awards-season backbone.

With Hollywood largely sitting out the festival, Venice will instead rely on a substantial international auteur presence, including titles from Nanni Moretti, Paul Schrader, and Luca Guadagnino, who notably won’t be there with his Sam Altman-inspired drama, Artificial, but is instead bringing his seven-hour portrait of Italian filmmaking maestro Bernardo Bertolucci. Of those titles, only Moretti’s movie, It Will Happen Tonight, is currently confirmed to be playing another festival, jetting from Venice to Toronto.

Netflix has already revealed that Ink will follow a similar Europe to Canada route with a likely stop in Telluride in between — a path that Searchlight is going to follow with Wild Horse Nine. Meanwhile, Oppenheim’s Primetime remains a question mark for now; the film currently isn’t scheduled to screen at Toronto or New York, but don’t rule out a Telluride screening.

Telluride Film Festival (Sept. 4–Sept. 7)

Despite the Telluride Film Festival‘s long-standing tradition of keeping its official program strictly under wraps until the eve of Labor Day weekend, the tea leaves are brewing up some obvious premieres, starting with Mike Leigh’s final film, Tender Loving Care. While the British auteur reportedly declined an out-of-competition berth at Venice, his latest drama — which stars Widow’s Bay breakout star Kate O’Flynn — is set for TIFF and NYFF screenings, which will likely be preceded by its world premiere in Telluride.

Another anticipated world premiere is Andrew Haigh’s A Long Winter, which industry insiders note could benefit from Telluride’s intimate, elevated atmosphere compared to the pomp and circumstance of the Lido. That environment certainly benefitted Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet last year, and it doesn’t hurt that Haigh had previous success by launching All of Us Strangers in Colorado in 2023.

Two more titles to keep an eye out for: Simon Stone’s Elsinore with a buzzy star turn by All of Us Strangers leading man, Andrew Scott, and Jesse Eisenberg’s A24 musical, The Debut, with Paul Giamatti and Julianne Moore chasing their latest Oscar bids.

Toronto International Film Festival (Sept. 10-20)

Siân Heder’s Being Heumann — the follow-up to her Best Picture-winning CODA — will serve as festival’s opening-night presentation, and the world premieres of Peter Farrelly’s I Play Rocky, Chris Rock’s Misty Green, Anton Corbijn’s A Talent for Murder, Courteney Cox’s Evil Genius, and Susanna White’s Prima Facie are among the Gala and Special Presentations. Of that quintet, only Misty Green will pop up at another one of the big four fall festivals beyond Toronto; New York is celebrating a hometown hero by giving the Brooklyn-raised Rock a main slate berth.

Other titles that are having their first and only peek-outs in Toronto include Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, starring two-time Oscar winner Mahershala Ali; The Julia Set headlined by One Battle After Another breakout Chase Infiniti; and Everybody Wants to F**k Me starring Taron Egerton.

Toronto is also a popular pit stop for Sundance titles that are looking to relaunch themselves into awards season. Sony Pictures Classics will screen both of its Park City pick-ups Ha-Chan Shake Your Booty! and The Only Living Pickpocket in New York as they seek to push the films’ respective stars — Rinko Kikuchi and John Turturro — into the lead acting races. And speaking of CODA, Beth de Araújo’s acclaimed drama Josephine became the first film since Heder’s movie to score Sundance’s two top prizes. Largely out of sight since January, look for Josephine to become a name that Oscar voters remember.

New York Film Festival (Sept. 25–Oct. 12)

James Gray’s Cannes-premiering Paper Tiger will kick things off as the festival’s opening night selection, while Tony Gilroy’s Behemoth!, Takashi Yamazaki’s Godzilla Minus Zero, Tom McCarthy’s A Statement, Jonathan Glazer’s Joy of Joys, and Ava DuVernay’s closing night documentary 14th will all have their world premieres in Lincoln Center’s famed Alice Tully Hall.

NYFF also boasts a substantial international auteur presence including Cristian Mungiu’s Palme d’Or-winning Fjord, Albert Serra’s Sixteen Moments of My Life, and Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur. The big question is how these titles position themselves during their East Coast stops as the fall awards circuit reaches full steam. Just last year, major spotlight entries like Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly, Scott Cooper’s Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, and Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt generated initial noise at NYFF but ultimately sputtered and failed to build meaningful momentum across the Oscar race.

And then there’s the whole “secret screening” thing. NYFF audiences were the first to experience Marty Supreme at last year’s edition, and the ecstatic reaction to what was described as an “unfinished cut” provided the ideal launching pad for the movie’s awards run, even if the air went out of Marty’s balloon before the Oscars. It stands to reason that NYFF programmers would want to repeat that experience — the only question is what will the secret movie be? Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning is one potential candidate given that its much-loved predecessor, The Social Network, kicked off the festival’s 2010 edition.

But if Sony and the other legacy studios stick to their apparent “no festivals” rule, speciality companies and streamers will have to step up and fill the void. Could it be Netflix’s animated hopeful, Ray Gunn? Or Robert Eggers’ latest exercise in Gothic horror, Werwulf? NYFF programmers know… but they definitely aren’t telling.

The Festival Dodgers

Last year, Paul Thomas Anderson shook up the awards circuit by skipping all four fall festivals and hosting the first screenings of One Battle After Another during TIFF — a prelude to the film’s epic run to Oscar night and a Best Picture victory. Barring any last minute surprises, Warner Bros. is set to repeat that playbook this year with Digger, the Alejandro G. Iñárritu-Tom Cruise collab that once upon a time would have done the full Venice-Telluride-Toronto-New York circuit. That’s a clear sign of how the calculus has shifted for the Hollywood studios as they lean into direct-to-theater momentum and late-year campaigns rather than risking early festival buzz.

Other contenders that are similarly set on dodging the major festivals include the aforementioned Social Reckoning and another highly-anticipated sequel to a previous Oscar winner — David Fincher’s Cliff Booth, a Once Upon a Time in Hollywood follow-up overseen by Netflix. There’s also a new version of Sense and Sensibility with Daisy Edgar-Jones that’s headed straight for theaters, and the latest stop-motion wonder from Laika Studios, Wildwood. For those films, the fall won’t be one festival after another.

Where 20 fall contenders are — and aren’t — screening