The Fall 2026 Film Festival Circuit: Who's Showing, Who's Skipping, and What It Means for the Oscars

Every year the fall festival circuit functions as a whispered audition for the Oscars. Venice, Telluride, Toronto, and the New York Film Festival don’t hand out Academy Awards, but they shape the narratives that eventually do. This year’s circuit is shaping up to be unusual — and the shape of it says more about where Hollywood is headed than any single movie does.

The four festivals occupy a strange position in the film industry calendar. They arrive after the summer blockbuster season winds down but before the holiday release corridor begins. For studios and streamers, they’re a proving ground. For filmmakers, they’re a marketplace. And for the rest of us, they’re the first signal of what the awards season will look like. The films that play well at these festivals don’t always win Oscars, but they almost always shape the conversation around who will.

The calendar: four festivals, one tight window

Venice kicks things off in late August or early September. Telluride follows almost immediately over Labor Day weekend. Toronto — now rebranded as the Toronto International Film Festival after dropping “International” from common usage — overlaps with both. NYFF closes the season in late September and early October. In practice, a film that plays Venice often hops to Telluride and Toronto within days. The logistics are exhausting, the jet lag is real, and the marketing value of that festival-to-festival momentum is enormous.

This year, twenty major awards contenders have already been mapped across those four venues. Most play two or three. A handful play only one. And exactly one film is expected to play all four.

Bucking Fastard: the one film playing everywhere

Werner Herzog’s “Bucking Fastard” is the lone movie expected to appear at Venice, Telluride, Toronto, and NYFF. It stars Kate Mara and Rooney Mara as sisters — the first time the two have shared the screen. It’s Herzog’s first narrative feature since 2019, and the early festival buzz has been intense enough that the film is still seeking U.S. distribution.

Playing all four festivals is both a badge of honor and a practical necessity for a film without a studio home. The visibility at each stop builds distribution leverage. If “Bucking Fastard” lands a strong review in Venice, that momentum carries into Telluride, where acquisition executives are already in town. By the time Toronto starts, a bidding war could be underway. Playing all four maximizes the chances of finding the right distributor — and the right price.

The Mara sisters are a draw on their own. Kate Mara’s recent work has leaned toward prestige television, while Rooney Mara has been selective about film projects since “Nightmare Alley.” A Herzog-directed film with both of them is the kind of package that makes festival programmers clear a slot.

The multi-festival strategy also serves a distribution purpose that goes beyond reviews. At Venice, the film gets its European premiere in front of an audience that skews toward art-house sensibilities. At Telluride, it screens for a smaller, more industry-focused crowd — the kind of people who write checks. At Toronto, the audience is the largest and most commercially minded of the four. At NYFF, the crowd is the New York critical establishment. Each audience tests a different aspect of the film’s potential. A movie that plays well across all four has demonstrated something rare: broad appeal without compromise.

The studios are staying home

Here’s the detail that should alarm anyone paying attention: not one of the five remaining Hollywood legacy studios — Disney, Paramount, Sony, Universal, and Warner Bros. — is expected to bring their awards-season contenders to the festival circuit this year.

This isn’t new, exactly. Studios have been gradually retreating from festivals for a decade. Netflix arrived to fill the gap, followed by Amazon, Apple, and other streamers. But the complete absence of legacy studios from the fall circuit is a milestone. It means the traditional pipeline — festival premiere, theatrical rollout, awards campaign — no longer runs through Venice or Toronto for the biggest players.

The studios’ strategy appears to be: skip the festival speculation cycle entirely, launch awards campaigns closer to voting, and use marketing spend to create the narrative instead of relying on festival reviews. Whether this works depends on whether the Academy’s voting body still responds to festival momentum or has shifted to pure marketing.

David Fincher’s “Cliff Booth” — a sequel to “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” produced by Netflix — is skipping the festivals entirely. So is Laika’s “Wildwood” and a new “Sense and Sensibility” adaptation starring Daisy Edgar-Jones. These films will arrive directly in theaters or on streaming platforms, bypassing the festival gatekeepers altogether.

Netflix and the streaming contenders

The studios may be absent, but Netflix has positioned itself as the dominant force at this year’s festivals. “Cliff Booth” may be skipping the circuit, but Netflix has other irons in the fire. The streaming giant has been the most aggressive buyer at festivals for the past five years, and 2026 looks like more of the same.

The advantage Netflix has is straightforward: they can afford to buy a film at Toronto for $20 million and then spend another $30 million on an awards campaign without blinking. Legacy studios, still recovering from pandemic-era financial hits and the streaming wars, are being more cautious. Netflix isn’t cautious. They’re playing the long game, and the fall festivals are their scouting combine.

The risk for Netflix is the same one they’ve always faced: their films often get strong reviews at festivals but struggle to convert that into Oscar wins. “The Power of the Dog” won Best Director. “Roma” and “Mank” and “The Irishman” all had festival momentum and Oscar nominations but fell short in the top categories. The question isn’t whether Netflix can acquire good films at festivals — they clearly can. The question is whether festival-acquired films can win Best Picture when the voting body still, at some level, values the theatrical experience.

The festival-to-streaming pipeline also creates an unusual dynamic for critics. When a film premieres at Venice and then drops on Netflix three weeks later, the critical conversation is compressed. There’s no slow build of word-of-mouth, no month-long theatrical run generating reviews and audience reactions. The film arrives on streaming with a burst of festival coverage, then competes for attention with whatever Netflix releases the following week. For awards purposes, this means a film needs to make its impression fast — and the festival circuit is where that impression begins.

The NYFF spotlight: Glazer, McCarthy, Duvernay

The New York Film Festival has quietly become the most interesting of the four major fall festivals. NYFF doesn’t chase acquisitions the way Toronto does, and it doesn’t have Venice’s glamour. What it has is curation — a programming team that consistently picks films for artistic merit over commercial potential.

This year’s NYFF Spotlight lineup includes several world premieres that suggest the festival is leaning into serious, idea-driven cinema. Jonathan Glazer’s “Joy of Joys” gets its world premiere at NYFF. Glazer’s last film, “The Zone of Interest,” won the Oscar for Best International Feature and was nominated for Best Picture. Whatever “Joy of Joys” turns out to be, it’ll be one of the most scrutinized premieres of the fall.

Tom McCarthy’s “The Statement” is an environmental ensemble drama that also premieres at NYFF. McCarthy won Best Original Screenplay for “Spotlight” and has been selective about his projects since. An environmental theme puts the film in conversation with the cultural moment — climate anxiety has become a reliable awards-season topic, and McCarthy’s track record with ensemble casts suggests this won’t be a preachy polemic.

Ava Duvernay’s “14th” closes the festival. It’s a documentary follow-up to “13th,” exploring the origins and future of birthright citizenship. Duvernay’s “13th” was nominated for Best Documentary Feature and became a cultural touchstone. A sequel arriving in 2026, when immigration policy remains one of the most contentious issues in American politics, is guaranteed to generate conversation — whether that conversation translates into awards momentum depends on the documentary branch’s appetite for political films.

NYFF also includes Cristian Mungiu’s “Fjord,” which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes. Mungiu is one of the most respected filmmakers in European cinema, and “Fjord” arriving at NYFF after its Cannes triumph gives the festival a prestige anchor. Jordan Firstman’s “Club Kid” — his feature debut — also screens at NYFF, suggesting the festival is willing to champion emerging voices alongside established masters.

What this means for the Oscar race

The fall festival circuit in 2026 tells a story about the industry’s shifting power dynamics. Legacy studios are retreating from the festival ecosystem. Streamers, led by Netflix, are filling the void. Independent distributors like A24 and Neon are still active at festivals but are no longer the only game in town.

For Oscar watchers, the practical implications are clear. The films that generate the most buzz at Venice and Toronto — the ones that critics call “must-see” and acquisition executives bid on — may not be the films that ultimately win. The studio system’s decision to bypass festivals suggests that the awards campaign playbook is being rewritten. Marketing, streaming availability, and voter outreach may matter more than festival reviews.

There’s also a timing question. The Academy moved its ceremony earlier in recent years, which compresses the awards season timeline. Films that premiere at Venice in early September used to have five months to build momentum. Now they might have three. That shorter window favors studios with existing relationships with Academy voters — the kind of institutional advantages that don’t depend on a festival premiere.

But festivals still matter for one crucial reason: they create the narrative. Even if a film doesn’t win at the Oscars, a strong festival run gives it cultural relevance. “Nomadland” played Venice, Telluride, and Toronto before winning Best Picture. “Parasite” played Cannes and then Telluride before its historic Oscar sweep. The path from festival to Oscar isn’t guaranteed, but it remains the most reliable route for films that don’t have the marketing budgets of a Disney or a Warner Bros.

Werner Herzog’s “Bucking Fastard” playing all four festivals is the story of the season — a filmmaker who still believes in the circuit, backed by two of the most compelling actors working today, looking for a home. Whether that search ends with a distribution deal or an Oscar nomination, it’s the kind of story the fall festivals were built to tell.