A Beginner’s Guide to Hollywood’s Awards Season: Every Major Show, In Order

If you’ve ever switched on the TV in mid-January and wondered why the same actors keep walking the same red carpets every other Sunday for three months — congratulations, you’ve discovered awards season.

For everyone outside Los Angeles, awards season can look like a confusing blur of golden statuettes and acceptance speeches. But it actually follows a tight, predictable calendar, and once you know the order of the shows, the pattern starts to make sense.

This guide walks through every major film and television awards ceremony in the United States — what each one is, why it matters, and where it sits in the season. Bookmark it; you’ll want it back next January.

What is “awards season”?

In Hollywood, “awards season” is the stretch from roughly early January through the second Sunday of March, when most of the year’s biggest film and TV awards are handed out one after another. Studios time their major releases around it, publicists go into overdrive, and stylists block out their calendars months in advance.

The technical eligibility window for most film awards covers anything released in U.S. theatres between January 1 and December 31 of the previous year. So films released in the autumn of one year — typically September through December — are usually the ones competing the following spring. That’s why prestige movies cluster around Thanksgiving and Christmas: they’re being positioned for awards.

How awards season actually works

Each individual show has its own voting body. Some are voted by working actors, some by film critics, some by an international press group, some by a wider academy of industry members. That matters, because the Oscars don’t take their cues from any single earlier show — but how a film performs across the earlier ceremonies absolutely shapes its momentum heading into Oscar night.

In practice the season runs in five major beats:

1. Golden Globes — early January
2. Critics Choice Awards — mid-January
3. SAG Awards — late February
4. BAFTAs — late February
5. Academy Awards (Oscars) — early March

Let’s walk through each, in order.

1. Golden Globes — early January

The Golden Globes traditionally kick off the calendar. They’re handed out in early January at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles, in a famously looser ceremony with a full dinner and an open bar — which is exactly why winners’ speeches here are often the season’s most memorable.

• Voted by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association historically; the ownership and voting structure has shifted in recent years, but the show’s identity as the “loose” awards remains.
• Combines film and television in a single ceremony — unique among the major shows.
• Splits movies into Drama and Musical or Comedy, so a sharp dramedy can win a Globe but lose at the Oscars (which has a single Best Picture race).

Why it matters: Golden Globes wins create the season’s first headlines and set narratives. A surprise drama winner here can become a serious Oscar contender overnight.

2. Critics Choice Awards — mid-January

The Critics Choice Awards arrive a week or two after the Globes. They’re voted by professional film and TV critics, which makes them stylistically different from the actor-driven shows that follow.

Why it matters: Critics tend to see a much wider range of films than general voters, so the Critics Choice slate often introduces smaller, less-marketed contenders into the conversation before the bigger ceremonies. They also frequently anticipate Oscar nominations, since critics’ tastes overlap meaningfully with Academy voters in many categories.

3. Screen Actors Guild Awards — late February

The SAG Awards — short for Screen Actors Guild — are the actors’ awards, voted entirely by the union’s membership. That makes them arguably the most predictive ceremony of the entire season for the acting categories.

• Only acting and ensemble awards — there is no Best Director or Best Picture category here.
• The Outstanding Cast award is the closest SAG equivalent of Best Picture.
• Because it’s voted by working actors, it tends to reward actor’s-actor performances; a winner here is usually the favourite for the matching Oscar.

Why it matters: Hollywood actors are by far the largest single voting bloc inside the Academy. So a SAG win is often a near-certain predictor of the Oscar lead-actor race.

4. BAFTAs — late February

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTAs) hands out the U.K.’s biggest film prizes a week or so before the Oscars. The ceremony is held in London — usually at the Royal Festival Hall — and skews more international than the American shows.

• Voted by the BAFTA membership of British and international film professionals.
• Often spotlights craft categories — production design, cinematography, editing — alongside the headline acting and Best Film prizes.
• Broadcasts in the U.S. on prestige cable and streaming, although on a tape delay due to the time difference.

Why it matters: There’s significant overlap between BAFTA voters and Academy voters, so wins here are watched closely. A film that sweeps the BAFTAs the week before the Oscars usually arrives at the Dolby Theatre with serious momentum.

5. Academy Awards (Oscars) — early March

The Oscars are the season’s grand finale. They’re held the first Sunday of March at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, broadcast live on ABC, and watched by tens of millions of people worldwide.

• Voted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which has roughly 10,000 members across actors, directors, writers, producers and craft branches.
• Awards are decided in two rounds: nominations are voted by branch (only directors nominate Best Director, only actors nominate the four acting categories, and so on), but the final winners are voted by the entire membership.
• Best Picture has used a preferential ballot system since 2009, where voters rank films from 1 to 10 instead of picking one. That’s why a broadly liked film often beats a passionate-but-divisive favourite.

Why it matters: It’s the Oscars. For better or worse, “Academy Award winner” is the single most globally recognised credit in the film industry, and the show is the centrepiece around which the rest of the season is built.

Other ceremonies worth knowing

Beyond the “Big Five,” a handful of other ceremonies fall inside or just before awards season and feed directly into the Oscar conversation:

• DGA Awards (Directors Guild) — early February. Often the strongest predictor of Best Director.
• PGA Awards (Producers Guild) — late February. Strong predictor of Best Picture.
• WGA Awards (Writers Guild) — late February. Predictor of the screenplay categories, although fewer films are eligible than at the Oscars.
• Independent Spirit Awards — the Saturday before the Oscars. Honours the best of independent and lower-budget American filmmaking.
• Emmys — September. Television’s equivalent of the Oscars; sits outside film awards season but worth knowing about as the TV-side counterpart.

Frequently asked questions

When is awards season 2026?

The 2026 season runs from the Golden Globes on the first Sunday of January through the Oscars on the second Sunday of March. Specific dates shift slightly each year — you’ll find the latest confirmed schedule in our Awards section.

Why are so many of these shows clustered in February?

The Oscars used to be held in late March, but in the 2000s they were moved up to early March to keep awards season from dragging into late spring. SAG, BAFTA and the guild awards then bunched up in February as the Oscars’ lead-up window.

Who decides which films are eligible?

Each show sets its own rules. Most U.S. film awards require a film to have had a qualifying U.S. theatrical run during the previous calendar year. Streaming-only films have qualified for years now, but rules vary on minimum theatrical window length.

What’s the difference between the Oscars and the Golden Globes?

Three big ones: the Globes include both film and TV in one ceremony while the Oscars are film-only; the Globes split films into Drama and Musical/Comedy while the Oscars do not; and the Globes are voted by a small foreign press body, while the Oscars are voted by roughly 10,000 industry members.

Do Globe wins predict the Oscars?

Loosely. The Globes’ voting body is much smaller than the Academy’s, so the overlap is imperfect — a Globe win generates buzz and momentum but doesn’t lock in an Oscar. SAG wins (for acting) and PGA wins (for Best Picture) are historically the strongest predictors.

How USA Celebs covers awards season

We cover each major ceremony live as the season plays out — winners, dressed lists, biggest moments, and the inside-baseball storylines a lot of mainstream coverage misses. Bookmark our Awards section and follow our Red Carpet coverage for everything as it happens. If you spot anything you think we got wrong here, let us know — we update this guide every season.

Frequently Asked Questions