The Big Picture

  • The 97th Oscars will be on March 2, 2025, a week earlier than 2024, starting at 7:00 p.m. EST.
  • ABC will broadcast the event, but no host announcement yet. Jimmy Kimmel is a possible choice.
  • Oscars traditionally awarded in spring, with new Casting Director award in 2026; ceremony held Feb-April usually.

Mark your calendars - next year's Oscars will be moving up a week. The 97th Academy Awards will take place on Sunday, March 2, 2025, one week earlier than this year's March 10 festivities. Deadline reports that next year's ceremony will also retain the earlier start time of the 2024 show, beginning at 7:00 p.m. EST/4:00 p.m. PST, making the show's frequent overruns less arduous for those who need to get up early on Monday morning. Nominations will be voted on between January 8 and 12, with the resulting nominations to be announced on January 17. Final voting will then take place between February 11 and 18.

ABC, which has broadcast the ceremony since 1976, will air next year's show, as well; the network's contract with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences runs until 2028. No word has been made yet of a host, although the 2024 show's emcee, Jimmy Kimmel, received good reviews, and is a mainstay of ABC's late-night lineup; it wouldn't be a surprise to see Kimmel take the stage of the Dolby Theater again next year.

When Have the Oscars Been Awarded in the Past?

The Oscars have traditionally been awarded in the spring; however, they are rarely as late in the year as the first-ever ceremony on May 16, 1929, when the silent classic Wings won the top prize. Between 1930 and 1932, the awards ceremony shifted to November for three years to move closer to the eligibility period, which was at the time a year and a half prior to the event. Soon, the ceremny was relocated back to the earlier half of the year, where it has remained ever since. Outside those outlier years, the Oscars have typically been awarded in late February, March, or early April, prompting frequent host Bob Hope's double-edged joke, "Welcome to the Oscars, or as it's known in my house, Passover". Thanks to pandemic disruptions, in recent years they have been awarded as early as February 9 (2020, Best Picture: Parasite), and as late as April 25 (2021, Best Picture: Nomadland).

One major change to the Oscars won't happen next year, however; the new award for Best Casting Director, which was announced earlier this year, will be awarded for the first time at the 2026 Oscars. It will be the first new competitive award added to the Oscars since Best Animated Feature was added in 2001. An award for stunt performers is reportedly still in the works.

The 2025 Oscars will be held at 7 p.m. EST on March 2; the ceremony will be broadcast on ABC. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.