The Oscars have always been about honoring the best in film — and that includes the songs that make scenes stick with you long after the credits roll. This year's Best Original Song category is a particularly interesting snapshot of what's happening in cinema right now: a K-Pop track breaking into the conversation for the first time, a blues-inflected piece tied to a record-breaking film, and a handful of other contenders vying for attention.
The Nominees
The 98th Academy Awards, happening March 15, 2026, has five songs in the running. "Dear Me" from Diana Warren: Relentless, "Golden" from KPop Demon Hunters, "I Lied to You" from Sinners, "Sweet Dreams of Joy" from Viva Verdi!, and "Train Dreams" from Train Dreams are all in the mix. But two of them have already started reshaping what an Oscar contender can look like.
"Golden" from KPop Demon Hunters is making history as the first K-Pop song ever nominated in this category. The Netflix film has resonated widely enough that the track has already claimed the Golden Globe for Best Song and landed four Grammy nominations. It's been compared to "Let It Go" from Frozen — that kind of cultural moment where a song becomes bigger than the film itself, at least for a while.
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Start Your News DetoxThe other frontrunner is "I Lied to You" from Sinners, which arrives with a different kind of weight. Written by Ludwig Göransson and Raphael Saadiq, sung by Miles Caton, the song taps into the blues tradition and its place in Black American history. It's part of Sinners' record-breaking 16 Oscar nominations overall — the film is clearly a major player this season.
What Didn't Make the Cut
One of the year's biggest surprises was what didn't get nominated. Wicked: For Good came with two original songs — "No Place Like Home" (sung by Cynthia Erivo) and "The Girl in the Bubble" (sung by Ariana Grande) — but neither cracked the final five. The snub signals something worth noting: the sequel didn't land with critics and audiences quite the way the first Wicked film did. Even strong performances and solid music weren't enough to push through in a competitive year.
The Best Original Song category has always been unpredictable — sometimes a song wins because it's genuinely moving, sometimes because its film's momentum carries it. This year feels like it's tilting toward songs that are doing something new, whether that's breaking genre barriers or deepening historical connections.
