The Oscars are moving back to late February for the 2021 and 2022 broadcasts, the Academy and ABC announced on Tuesday.
It was previously announced that the 2020 Oscars would take place at the earliest date in the history of the show on Feb. 9, 2020. But the subsequent ceremonies will move back to the final weekend in February, on Feb. 28, 2021 for the 93rd Oscars and Feb. 27, 2022 for the 94th Oscars due to the timing of the 2022 Olympics, the Super Bowl and national holidays.
The Academy and ABC will continue to evaluate dates for future years.
The earlier Oscars left big questions for how it would impact other awards shows that all lead up to the Oscars and whether other awards would shift earlier in response. And it further introduced questions about the box office in the winter months, when many studios roll out their awards fare with an eye on an awards season bump.
The move to early January in 2020 was approved at a momentous Board of Governors meeting in early August 2018. At that meeting, a board under pressure to halt the Oscar show’s steady ratings decline voted to move the Oscars to the beginning of February in 2020 as well as present some awards off the air and add a new category for popular movies. Both of the latter moves were supposed to take place in 2019.
The “Popcorn Oscar,” as the new category was dubbed, was tabled for further discussion after only one month, while the plan to present Oscar categories during the commercial breaks was killed less than two weeks before this year’s telecast in the face of sustained criticism from Hollywood guilds, craftspeople and film lovers.
Moving the 2021 and 2022 shows back to late February without even seeing how the earlier date will work in 2020 suggests that the Academy has now gone back on all three of the major changes it made at that board meeting.
As previously announced, the Academy’s Scientific and Technical Awards have also moved to June 2020. Scientific and Technical Awards are given for technologies developed over a period of time and are not specific to a single awards year.
The key dates for the Oscars are below, with the awards season kicking off with the Governors Awards on Sunday, Oct. 27.
- Governors Awards -Sunday, October 27, 2019
- Preliminary Voting Begins – Friday, December 6, 2019
- Preliminary Voting Ends – Tuesday, December 10, 2019
- Nominations Voting Begins – Thursday, January 2, 2020
- Nominations Voting Ends – Tuesday, January 7, 2020
- Oscar Nominations Announcement – Monday, January 13, 2020
- Oscar Nominees Luncheon – Monday, January 27, 2020
- Finals Voting Begins – Thursday, January 30, 2020
- Finals Voting Ends – Tuesday, February 4, 2020
- 92nd Oscars – Sunday, February 9, 2020
The Oscars ceremony is broadcast live at 5 p.m. PT/ 8 p.m. ET on the ABC Television Network and globally in more than 225 countries and territories worldwide.
Steve Pond contributed to this report.