Baftas 2026 live: Robert Aramayo beats DiCaprio and Chalamet in shock Best Actor win

‘One Battle After Another’, Jessie Buckley and Wunmi Mosaku also score major wins, during Alan Cumming-presented ceremony

Robert Aramayo wins Best Actor at Baftas 2026

Tonight’s Baftas were dominated by One Battle After Another, Sinners and Hamnet, but it was a very unexpected Best Actor win that sent shockwaves through Royal Festival Hall.

Despite competition from Leonardo DiCaprio, Timothée Chalamet and Michael B Jordan, it was British newcomer Robert Aramayo – for the British biopic I Swear – who took home the Best Actor prize, with the 33-year-old expressing enormous surprise during his speech. Aramayo also won the EE Rising Star award.

One Battle After Another was crowned Best Picture and also won Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay for Paul Thomas Anderson. Best Supporting Actor went to Sean Penn, who was unable to attend the ceremony to collect his prize.

Jessie Buckley was awarded Best Actress for Hamnet, while the film also pocketed the Best British Film award.

It was a big night for the vampire film Sinners, as Ryan Coogler collected the Best Original Screenplay award, and Wunmi Mosaku took home Best Supporting Actress prize.

Despite earning 11 nominations, the sports drama Marty Supreme went home entirely empty-handed.

There was also consternation during the ceremony due to outbursts made by the Tourette Syndrome campaigner John Davidson, whose life serves as the inspiration for I Swear. Bafta host Alan Cumming apologised for bad language expressed by Davidson during the show, while explaining that those with Tourette’s experience involuntary tics and outbursts.

The full list of winners can be found here.

Baftas 2026

• Robert Aramayo scores shock Best Actor win; Jessie Buckley Best Actress
• One Battle After Another wins Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay
• Alan Cumming's rather subdued monologue avoided politics (and jokes)
• Best-dressed on the red carpet
• Bafta 2026 nominations

[23 February 2026 06:00 · Adam White]

In one of the funnier acceptance speeches of the night, Best Actress winner Jessie Buckley recalled her mortifying first encounter with her long-time agent Lindy King, after she arrived in London determined to make it as an actor.

“I had a nuclear bad fake tan on, white hoop earrings, a polka-dot red skirt and had the audacity to say one day I wanted to be like Judi Dench,” she joked.

Jessie Buckley with her Bafta (BBC)

[23 February 2026 05:00 · Adam White]

Looking ahead to next month’s Oscars, there still seems to not be a consensus over who will win the Supporting categories.

When it comes to Supporting Actor, the Golden Globes went for Stellan Skarsgard, Bafta went for Sean Penn and the Critics Choice Awards went for Jacob Elordi.

Meanwhile, Bafta went for Wunmi Mosaku for Supporting Actress, Golden Globes went for Teyana Taylor, and Critics’ Choice went for Amy Madigan.

It leaves us none the wiser for what will happen next! Exciting!

Wunmi Mosaku wins her Bafta for Best Supporting Actress (BBC)

[23 February 2026 04:00 · Adam White]

Sinners writer/director Ryan Coogler also made history tonight, becoming the first Black writer to win the Bafta for Best Original Screenplay.

Ryan Coogler (BBC)

[23 February 2026 03:00 · Adam White]

Marty Supreme didn’t win a single one of its 11 nominations tonight, and if that feels like a record, well, it sort of is!

The Timothee Chalamet movie now ties Ken Russell’s 1969 drama Women in Love and the JM Barrie biopic Finding Neverland (2004) as the most-nominated loser in Bafta history, which is slightly mad isn’t it?

Timothee Chalamet in 'Marty Supreme' (Focus Features)

[23 February 2026 02:00 · Adam White]

One of the bigger awards of the night was Best Director, which was taken home by One Battle After Another’s Paul Thomas Anderson...

[23 February 2026 01:00 · Adam White]

Fancy taking a peek at some of the night’s most attention-grabbing red carpet looks? Annabel Nugent has curated a selection of some of the boldest here...

[23 February 2026 00:00 · Adam White]

Sunday night’s show largely went off without a hitch, but host Alan Cumming did at one point have to apologise and explain why some viewers may have heard bad language emanating from the audience during the show. He explained that this was the result of involuntary outbursts made by the Tourette Syndrome campaigner John Davidson, the inspiration for the film I Swear.

[22 February 2026 23:00 · Adam White]

Wunmi Mosaku, winner of the Best Supporting Actress prize for Sinners, spoke to the press backstage and expressed her joy over her director Ryan Coogler’s win in Best Original Screenplay...

[22 February 2026 22:05 · Adam White]

If you missed here, here’s Robert Aramayo’s very shocked acceptance speech after he beat far bigger names in the Best Actor category.

[22 February 2026 21:03 · Adam White]

And we’re done! But not before a vaguely political but not really political last monologue by Alan Cumming.

“We have welcomed people from all over the world, people who look and sound and love differently, for a celebration of stories and ideas and culture, in fact, a celebration of diversity and equality and inclusion,” Cumming said. “And guess what? Nobody died.”

This was a very Bafta-coded Bafta ceremony, which was neither scandalous nor particularly funny, but also missing that necessary bit of slight madness to it that (on paper) should make this annual ceremony really distinct.

Which is a long way of saying, where on earth was Ariana DeBose?