The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is moving to require Oscar voters to watch every film nominated in a category before casting a ballot, closing a long-standing gap in the Academy's voting procedure, TODAY.com reported.

The change, captured under the headline "Oscars voters didn't have to watch all nominated movies. That's changing now," reverses a rule the Academy has maintained for decades and repositions viewing certification as a precondition for participation in the final round of voting.

What was the old rule?

Under the previous procedure, voting members could cast a ballot in any category for which they held eligibility, regardless of whether they had screened the full shortlist. The Academy encouraged attendance at For Your Consideration events and branch-hosted screenings, but the rule placed no formal screening obligation on individual voters.

That structure drew repeated criticism from filmmakers, awards strategists, and members of the directors, actors, and writers branches, who argued the system rewarded name recognition, campaign spending, and pre-existing relationships over direct engagement with the nominated work.

What changes now?

The Academy now requires members to certify, through its online voting platform or branch-organized screenings, that they have viewed every nominee in each category on their ballot. Members who cannot certify full viewing cannot vote in that category.

The mechanism narrows the pool of eligible voters on a per-category basis and concentrates outcomes on members who have made the time to watch the complete shortlist. Awards strategists expect the requirement to blunt the perennial late-campaign tactic of mailing screeners to voters who never planned to watch them, and to discipline the timing of For Your Consideration releases.

What does it mean for the race?

Campaign teams will now need to budget for a more accountable electorate. Studios track attendee lists at FYC screenings with greater rigor, and awards consultants gain a new data set to model turnout. The change is likely to redistribute influence:

• From older and time-pressed voters, who historically skipped hard-to-fit nominees.
• To retired members, branch specialists, and committed cinephiles with the bandwidth to clear a full shortlist.

Categories with shorter runtimes — animated short, documentary short, live action short — may see the sharpest turnout increases, since the time cost of full viewing is manageable. Best Picture, the broadest category, remains the toughest test: clearing a ten-nominee feature field against competing holiday releases and festival travel has historically been a logistical lift, even for branches that organize group viewings.

What questions remain?

The Academy has not detailed enforcement. It is unclear whether the certification requirement applies only to the final round that picks winners, or also to the earlier nominations ballot that produces the shortlists themselves. The Academy has also not disclosed how it will verify viewing claims or what penalty a member might face for a false attestation.

Equally open: the role of the Academy's member screening platform, which is the most likely venue for the certification workflow, and whether the organization will expand its catalog of available screeners to absorb the new demand.

The full policy text and the implementation timeline typically appear in the Academy's annual rules package, distributed to members ahead of the next voting cycle.