2026 Student Academy Award Winners Revealed as Ceremony Moves to TIFF for the First Time

TIFF Lightbox at Reitman Square on Monday, September 14, 2026, at 6 p.m. ET, 

Sixteen emerging filmmakers from around the world will be honored at TIFF Lightbox, with every winning film now eligible to compete for the 99th Oscars.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has revealed the winners of the 2026 Student Academy Awards, offering an early look at 16 filmmakers who may soon be shaping what appears on festival screens, studio slates and future Oscar ballots.

The 53rd edition of the international student filmmaking competition attracted 2,972 entries from 894 colleges and universities worldwide. Twelve films were selected across four categories: Alternative/Experimental, Animation, Documentary and Narrative.

For film devotees, the Student Academy Awards have long functioned as something more consequential than a graduation showcase. They are part laboratory, part global scouting report and part portal into the next generation of cinematic language. Previous winners include Spike Lee, Pete Docter, Robert Zemeckis, Patricia Cardoso and Patricia Riggen—filmmakers whose careers would eventually encompass independent landmarks, studio blockbusters, animation classics and major awards recognition.

This year, that portal is moving north.

For the first time, the Student Academy Awards ceremony will be presented during the Toronto International Film Festival. The event will take place at TIFF Lightbox at Reitman Square on Monday, September 14, 2026, at 6 p.m. ET, in partnership with Rolex.

Gold, silver and bronze placements within each category will be announced during the ceremony.

2026 Student Academy Award Winners

Alternative/Experimental

Lei He, “Drifting”
Duke University, United States

Viktorie Štěpánová, “Volklore”
Filmová a Televizní Fakulta Akademie Múzických Umění v Praze, commonly known as FAMU, Czech Republic

Nina Broers, “Where Is My Sex Drive?”
St. Joost School of Art & Design, Netherlands

Animation

Jonathan Lally, Elio Molinaro and Nicolás Acevedo Ferraté, “COWS”
École Supérieure de Métiers Artistiques, or ESMA, France

Noran Fikri Alezabi, Xinyue Ma and Yulin Yue, “Gauze”
Gobelins, France

Matthias Strasser, “The Panic Inside”
Film Academy Baden-Württemberg, Germany

Documentary

Arjun Fischer, “Artificial Love”
University of Southern California, United States

Jason Elliott, “I Want to Live”
National Film and Television School, United Kingdom

Lara Dihmis, “The Last People of Petra”
New York University, United States

]

Narrative

Stanzin Jigmet, “The Dragon Letter”
Escola Superior de Cinema i Audiovisuals de Catalunya, or ESCAC, Spain

Leon Korzyński, “Kamathipura Express”
Warsaw Film School, Poland

Antoine Boulanger, “The Pichenotte”
Concordia University, Canada

The 2026 competition also marks the first Student Academy Award recognition for students from Concordia University, Duke University, ESMA, ESCAC, St. Joost School of Art & Design and Warsaw Film School.

That list points to the genuinely international character of the awards. The winning institutions stretch across the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, Poland, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The subjects suggested by the films’ titles move just as freely—from Petra and Kamathipura to artificial intimacy, bodily panic, folklore and whatever magnificent animated disorder may be awaiting audiences in a film called “COWS.”]

Student Academy Award Winners Enter the 99th Oscars Race

The awards arrive with a practical advantage capable of transforming a student film’s trajectory.

Every 2026 Student Academy Award-winning film is now eligible to compete for the 99th Academy Awards in one of three short-film categories:

Animated Short Film, Live Action Short Film or Documentary Short Film.

Eligibility does not guarantee a nomination, but it moves these films into the larger machinery of the Oscar season—a substantial leap for work created within film schools rather than traditional production companies or studio systems.

Student Academy Award winners have collectively gone on to receive 70 Oscar nominations and have won or shared 15 Academy Awards. That history makes the program one of the Academy’s most intriguing long-range indicators. The films may be short, experimental or produced with student resources, but the talent is rarely confined to the classroom.

The winners will also participate in a weekend of educational programming, professional networking and exclusive access to Academy members intended to support their transition into the international film industry.

A Film-School Showcase Becomes Part of the TIFF Conversation

Holding the ceremony at TIFF gives the Student Academy Awards a particularly fitting setting.

Toronto is one of the places where cinema’s different ecosystems collide: emerging filmmakers and established auteurs, independent discoveries and studio awards contenders, formal experimentation and the commercial realities of distribution. Bringing the Student Academy Award winners into that environment places their work directly inside a major international festival conversation rather than at its margins.

It also transforms the ceremony into a potential introduction—not simply to the Academy, but to critics, programmers, producers, distributors and fellow filmmakers already assembled in Toronto.

Rolex is supporting the event through its continuing partnership with the Academy. The company has backed the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences since 2017 and also supports the Oscars, Governors Awards, Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, Film at Lincoln Center, The Film Foundation and the United Kingdom’s National Film and Television School.

Established in 1972, the Student Academy Awards were created to give emerging filmmakers a platform and provide meaningful access to the professional film industry.

More than five decades later, that mission remains intact. The cameras have changed. The means of production have changed. Animation, documentary and experimental storytelling continue to mutate. But the essential pleasure remains the same: discovering a filmmaker before the rest of the world knows to watch for the name.

This year, there are 16 of them.

The 2026 Student Academy Awards ceremony will be held Monday, September 14, at 6 p.m. ET at TIFF Lightbox in Toronto.

For additional information, visit Oscars.org.