There can be a tie at the Oscars because the rules explicitly allow two (or more) nominees to win if they receive exactly the same number of votes in a category.

How Can There Be a Tie at the Oscars?

The Basic Rule

  • Members of the Academy each vote for one nominee per category, and the votes are counted by an independent accounting firm.
  • If two nominees finish with the exact same number of votes, it is treated as a true tie and both are declared winners.
  • Each winner gets their own Oscar statuette and they officially share the title (for example, both are listed as “Best Actress” winners for that year).

In the early years, the Academy even allowed “near ties”: if someone came within three votes of the winner, they could also receive an Oscar. That rule was scrapped after the 1932 Best Actor situation, and today only exact vote ties count.

What Actually Happens on Stage?

  • The winner envelope can be printed to indicate there is a tie, with instructions for the presenters.
  • The presenter typically announces one winner, that person comes up and gives a speech, and then the presenter announces the second winner and repeats the process.
  • Both winners are treated as full, equal winners in the official records and future references.

A recent example (and the reason this is trending again) is the 2026 ceremony, where a category like Best Live-Action Short Film ended in a tie, surprising viewers because it is so rare.

How Often Has This Happened?

Ties are extremely rare but not unheard of. Over nearly a century of Oscars, there have been only about six or seven ties, depending on how you count edge cases and updated rules. Some notable ones:

  • 1932 – Best Actor tie: Wallace Beery and Fredric March, under the old “within three votes” rule.
  • 1950 – Best Documentary Short: two winners shared the Oscar.
  • 1969 – Famous Best Actress tie: Katharine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand both won.
  • 2012 – Sound Editing tie between Skyfall and Zero Dark Thirty.

Because voting is done by thousands of people, exact ties are statistically unlikely—but with just enough overlap, they can and do happen occasionally.

Why People Are Talking About It Now

  • The latest Oscars (mid‑2026) featured a shock tie in a major category, which immediately sparked “how is that even allowed?” threads on social media and forums.
  • Many newer viewers assumed the system would have some automatic tiebreaker, but the Academy’s rule is the opposite: a tie is honored, not broken.

In current forum discussions, people are split between thinking ties are a fun bit of drama and feeling they dilute the sense of a single, definitive winner—especially in big acting or picture categories.

Mini FAQ

So, is there any tiebreaker at all?
No. If the final, certified vote count is identical, they simply declare a tie and both win.

Do the winners have to share one statue?
No. Each winner gets their own Oscar; they do not pass one around or alternate years.

Could more than two winners tie?
In theory yes—if three (or more) nominees got exactly the same number of votes, they would all be listed as winners, though this has not happened in a major category.

Bottom line: There can be a tie at the Oscars because the Academy’s rules say that exact equal vote counts result in multiple official winners, rather than any tiebreaker.

TL;DR: A tie at the Oscars happens when two nominees receive exactly the same number of votes; there’s no tiebreaker, both are announced as winners, each gets a statue, and they share the title for that year.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.