Cassandra Kulukundis received the Oscars’ first competitive casting award

Cassandra Kulukundis won the casting Oscar for One Battle After Another at the 98th Academy Awards. The Academy’s official video, published March 15, 2026, identifies Gwyneth Paltrow as the presenter. The result gave a named casting professional an award in a newly recognized competitive discipline. ^[1]

The Academy had announced the annual Achievement in Casting award on February 8, 2024. Its stated starting point was the 98th ceremony, recognizing films released in 2025. The year of a film’s release and the year of the ceremony thus refer to different stages of the same awards cycle. ^[2]

That earlier announcement also described a longer institutional history: the Academy created its Casting Directors Branch in July 2013. Nearly 160 members belonged to the branch when the 2024 announcement was issued. That is a historical membership figure, not a claim about its current size. ^[2]

Before casting, the last new category had been animated feature, established in 2001, the Academy said. Adding a competitive award changes which filmmaking work receives its own formal recognition. This account reports the category’s creation and first winner; it makes no claim to independently judge the films or casting process. ^[2]

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