Has There Ever Actually Been a Tie at the Oscars? Here's What Happens if There Is
There is a protocol in place for categories that have a tie.
Published March 16 2026, 11:46 a.m. ET
It might be hard for some to believe that there might be a flaw in how winners are picked on the Oscars, but after the 2026 event aired on television, people were left wondering if there has ever been a tie at the Oscars. Unlike some other awards shows that are quite a bit less prestigious, winners for the Oscars are chosen by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS).
So yeah, things are pretty serious where the Oscars are concerned when it comes to picking nominees and then voting on those nominees to see who walks away with the actual statuette. These aren't MTV moon men we're talking about, or Teen Choice Awards surfboards. So, when it comes to the Oscars, has there ever been a tie?
Has there ever been a tie at the Oscars?
It turns out, there has been not one Oscars tie over the award show's long history, but multiple instances where winners tied in different categories. Since the AMPAS conducts the votes and takes care of choosing winners, you'd think there would be a safeguard in place to make sure this doesn't happen, but nope, that's not the case at all.
According to Vogue, the first Oscars tie happened in 1932. At the time, Fredric March won for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Wallace Beery were awarded an Oscar for his role in The Champ. There was a rule in place that awarded an Oscar to someone who was within three votes of winning, which is why there were two winners in this instance, with March technically winning one more vote than Beery.
A much more notable instance where two actors tied for an Oscar was in 1969, when two legendary performers, Katharine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand, tied for the Best Actress category. According to History.com, both women received 3,030 votes. Both Hepburn and Streisand got awards at the time.
What happens if there is a tie at the Oscars?
Instead of some wild tie-breaker, the Academy simply gives out two awards in the same category if there is a tie at the Oscars. Per The Hollywood Reporter, if the AMPAS discovers that two winners have an equal number of votes, the organization allows the tie to stand and, as a result, both winners are awarded their own separate statuettes. It just so happens that, over the course of the decades the Oscars have been around, ties only happened a handful of times.
Oscar winners are picked by an organization.
The AMPAS has more than 10,000 members who are in 17 branches of the organization, according to PBS. Voting among these members across different categories takes place online a few days before the Oscars each year. PricewaterhouseCoopers, the accounting firm that tallies the votes and is made aware of the winners ahead of the Oscars, and no one else is reportedly told who was chosen as a winner. It's all a very serious and time-honored practice, but still, ties at the Oscars do happen.