The Directors Guild of America has spoken, and the DGA Awards 2026 nominees list reads like a who’s-who of auteurs having very different kinds of years. Paul Thomas Anderson. Ryan Coogler. Guillermo del Toro. Josh Safdie. Chloé Zhao. Five names. Five wildly different films. And, if history is any guide, one of them is about to add “Oscar winner” to their resume.
Complete DGA Awards 2026 Nominees List
Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Theatrical Feature Film:
PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON
One Battle After Another — Warner Bros
Directorial Team:
- Unit Production Manager: Will Weiske
- First Assistant Director: Adam Somner
- Second Assistant Director: Trevor Tavares, Ian Stone
- Second Second Assistant Director: Dominic Pacitti, Rafael Sanz-Jimenez
- Additional Second Assistant Director: Nuekellar Hardy, Chunning Chang, Kit Conners, Kasia Trojak, Tyler Young
RYAN COOGLER
Sinners — Warner Bros
Directorial Team:
- Unit Production Manager: Will Greenfield, Kenneth Yu
- First Assistant Director: Marvin Williams
- Second Assistant Director: Amir R. Khan
- Additional Second Assistant Director: Gregg Carr, Desiree Stevenson
GUILLERMO DEL TORO
Frankenstein — Netflix
Directorial Team:
- Unit Production Manager: J. Miles Dale
- First Assistant Director: Walter Gasparovic
- Second Assistant Director: Chad Belair
JOSH SAFDIE
Marty Supreme — A24
Directorial Team:
- Unit Production Manager: Anthony Katagas, Joe Guest
- First Assistant Director: Jeremy Marks
- Second Assistant Director: Zach Citarella
- Second Second Assistant Director: Kailyn Dabkowski
- Assistant Unit Production Manager: Max Samu, Suk Yi Mar, Samson Jacobson
- Location Manager: Matthew Kania, Ross Brodar
CHLOÉ ZHAO
Hamnet — Focus Features
First-Time Feature Film Nominees:
HASAN HADI
The President’s Cake — Sony Pictures Classics
HARRY LIGHTON
Pillion — A24
CHARLIE POLINGER
The Plague — Independent Film Company
ALEX RUSSELL
Lurker — Mubi
EVA VICTOR
Sorry, Baby — A24
What The Nominations Actually Tell Us
The DGA is not the Oscars, but it’s uncomfortably close. Since 1948, the DGA winner has matched the Oscar Best Director winner the vast majority of the time. When there’s a mismatch, it’s usually because the Academy decides to make a statement—which is to say, it almost never happens.
So this list matters. A lot.
Anderson is the frontrunner by momentum alone. He just won Best Director at the Critics Choice Awards for One Battle After Another, and this marks his third DGA nomination after There Will Be Blood and Licorice Pizza. The man has never won. That kind of losing streak tends to build sympathy votes.
Del Toro and Zhao are both past DGA winners—del Toro for The Shape of Water in 2018, Zhao for Nomadland in 2021. Both of those films went on to win Best Picture at the Oscars. There’s a pattern here. The DGA likes directors who make the kind of films that make the Academy feel good about itself.
The Coogler and Safdie Factor
This is where it gets interesting. Neither Coogler nor Safdie has ever received a DGA nomination before. Coogler, who turned the Black Panther franchise into a cultural phenomenon and delivered Creed, has somehow never been here. Safdie, who—alongside his brother Benny—made Uncut Gems and Good Time, is flying solo for Marty Supreme and finally getting recognized.
The DGA tends to favor traditional prestige. Coogler’s Sinners is a genre film at heart—horror, from what the early buzz suggests—and genre films have historically had a harder time breaking through. Safdie’s work is kinetic, chaotic, allergic to the kind of stately pacing the DGA usually rewards.
And yet, here they are. That’s either a sign the guild is evolving, or a sign that this year’s field is so strong that even the traditionalists couldn’t ignore them.
Why The Directorial Teams Matter
One detail that often gets overlooked: the DGA doesn’t just nominate directors. It nominates entire directorial teams. Look at the names listed above—the Unit Production Managers, the First and Second Assistant Directors. These are the people who execute the vision on set, day after day.
Anderson’s team is massive. Safdie’s includes location managers. Del Toro’s is lean. These details tell you something about how each director works. Anderson orchestrates chaos with a small army. Del Toro trusts a tight unit. Safdie, shooting in New York for Marty Supreme, needed people who knew the city block by block.
The size of the team doesn’t predict quality. But it reveals process.
The First-Time Feature Category
This category is worth watching. Eva Victor’s Sorry, Baby has A24 behind it, which usually means solid marketing muscle. Hasan Hadi’s The President’s Cake was Iraq’s Oscar submission—a detail that carries weight in a category designed to spotlight emerging voices.
Last year, RaMell Ross won this award for Nickel Boys. The First-Time category has become a reliable indicator of who the industry is betting on next.
What This Means For The Oscars
Here’s the cynical read: Anderson is the safe bet. He’s overdue. He’s respected. He’s made a film that, by all accounts, is exactly the kind of ambitious, mid-budget drama the Academy used to greenlight without blinking. Voting for him feels like a correction.
But Coogler has narrative momentum. Sinners has been generating the kind of word-of-mouth that suggests genuine audience enthusiasm, not just critical approval. If the Academy is in a populist mood—and after the Anora win, who knows—Coogler could pull an upset.
Del Toro is the wildcard. Frankenstein is a Netflix film, which still carries a whiff of controversy among theatrical purists. But del Toro has never made a film that wasn’t visually singular, and the DGA respects craft above almost everything else.
Safdie and Zhao feel like longshots. Not because their work is lesser, but because the path from nomination to win requires a certain kind of campaign infrastructure that solo artists and smaller distributors don’t always have.
What The DGA Awards 2026 Nominees Signal
- Anderson’s Third Time: Three nominations without a win creates a narrative. The DGA might decide it’s time.
- Coogler’s Breakthrough: First nomination, major studio backing, genre-bending ambition. A dark horse with mainstream appeal.
- Del Toro’s Netflix Test: Can a streaming film win the top prize from a guild that champions theatrical exhibition?
- Safdie Goes Solo: Without Benny, does the DGA see Josh as half of something or a complete vision?
- First-Timers Matter: A24’s dominance in the emerging category suggests where the industry’s attention is heading.
FAQ: DGA Awards 2026 Nominees Analysis
Why does the DGA matter more than most guilds for Oscar predictions?
Because the overlap between DGA voters and Academy members is substantial, and both groups tend to value similar things: technical command, visual ambition, and a certain seriousness of purpose. When the DGA picks a winner, the Academy usually agrees—not because they’re colluding, but because they’re watching the same films with the same biases.
How likely is it that a first-time DGA nominee wins?
Historically, it’s rare but not impossible. The DGA tends to reward experience and pedigree, which is why repeat nominees like Anderson have an edge. But Coogler and Safdie bring cultural cachet that the older guard may want to co-opt. Don’t count them out entirely.
Does Netflix backing hurt del Toro’s chances?
Maybe. The theatrical vs. streaming debate hasn’t gone away, and guild voters tend to skew toward filmmakers who champion the theatrical experience. That said, del Toro is a previous winner with undeniable craft. If Frankenstein is as visually stunning as expected, the platform may not matter.
The DGA ceremony is set for February 7 at the Beverly Hilton. Voting runs through February 6. If you’re tracking the Oscar race, this is the clearest signal you’re going to get—and the only question left is whether the Academy follows the script or decides to surprise everyone.
