Breakout stars Jacob Elordi and Teyana Taylor, along with Hollywood mainstays Jenna Ortega and Jon Bernthal, and new Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro are among the 529 invitees to the newest member class of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
The 2026 invitee list includes 95 Oscar nominees — 21 of them winners — along with three Scientific and Technical Awards recipients. The list is a touch leaner than the 534 names extended invitations last year, though the makeup of the class is the bigger story.
“We are delighted to invite this remarkable group of film artists and professionals from around the world to join the Academy,” Academy CEO Bill Kramer and Academy President Lynette Howell Taylor said in a joint statement. “Through their commitment to filmmaking, this year’s exceptionally talented class has made significant contributions to our global movie industry.”
By the numbers, the class is 42% women, 56% from underrepresented communities and 53% drawn from 60 countries and territories outside the United States. That underrepresented-communities figure marks a notable jump from the 45% reported in the 2025 class, evidence that the Academy’s decade-long campaign to diversify its ranks in the wake of #OscarsSoWhite has not lost momentum, even as annual class sizes have shrunk from the record-setting cohorts of 2016 through 2020. If all 2026 invitees accept Academy membership, total AMPAS members (including Emeritus) will be 11,319 and the number of voting members will be 10,338. With the addition of the 2026 new member class, the Academy is 36% women, 25% from underrepresented communities and 22% international.
The actors branch includes marquee names like “Frankenstein” stars Jacob Elordi and Mia Goth, who both earned spots, as did Jenna Ortega of “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” and “Death of a Unicorn,” “Weapons” star Julia Garner and “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery” lead Josh O’Connor. The branch also welcomes Paddy Considine, Simu Liu, Anthony Ramos, Scoot McNairy, Tig Notaro, Bill Skarsgård and Wood Harris, along with character actor mainstays Jon Bernthal, David Dastmalchian and Jemaine Clement.
There is a healthy contingent of names that read as long overdue — the kind that prompt a “wait, weren’t they already a member?” double take. Stephen Fry, Josh Gad, Lily Rabe, Jenny Slate and “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” star Mathieu Amalric all join the acting ranks, a reminder that an Oscar nomination is hardly a prerequisite for membership.
Also among the new members are industry stalwarts such as directors James Ponsoldt (“The End of the Tour”) and Eugene Ashe (“Sylvie’s Love”), documentarian Andrew Jarecki (“The Alabama Solution”), singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles (“Come See Me in the Good Light”), producer Eli Bush (“Lady Bird”) and screenwriter Dan Fogelman (“Crazy, Stupid, Love”). The brilliant minds behind the Oscar-winning “KPop Demon Hunters” and its original song “Golden” will also cast their ballots in the future, including directors Chris Appelhans and Maggie Kang, and music sensation EJae.
Among the directors, the class captures several of the year’s most talked-about filmmakers. “Weapons” and “Barbarian” auteur Zach Cregger landed an invitation, as do brothers Benny and Josh Safdie — who worked separately on “The Smashing Machine” and “Marty Supreme,” respectively — and Mexican filmmakers Alonso Ruizpalacios (“La Cocina”) and Fernanda Valadez (“Sujo”). Raven Jackson, invited on the strength of her debut “All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt,” is among the breakout names, alongside Korean genre stylist Kim Jee-woon and China’s Guan Hu.
Nine individuals — flagged with an asterisk on the official list — were invited by more than one branch and must choose a single home upon accepting the invitation. They include both Safdie brothers, “Sirāt” filmmaker Oliver Laxe, who pulled invitations from the directors and writers branches, and a quartet of multihyphenates spanning the editing, writing, animation and short films branches. Among those are Chris Lavis, Florence Miailhe, Maciek Szczerbowski and Conall Jones.
D’Amaro, Disney’s new CEO, is among the invited executives, joined by the New York Film Festival’s Dennis Lim and NBCUniversal Entertainment’s chief business officer, Liz Jenkins.
The marketing and publicity ranks are robust as well, with Emily Lu Aldrich of Accolade Publicity, Jonathan Epstein of Strategy PR, Danielle Freiberg of Independent Film Company, Madelyn Hammond of Critics Choice, Josh Haroutunian of Divergent PR, Megan Moss of Narrative PR and Rocío Chicharro Gutiérrez of dosD3 among the invitees.
One notable name still absent from the Academy’s ranks is “Sinners” writer-director Ryan Coogler, who revealed last year that he declined an invitation to join the organization nearly a decade ago. His wife and producing partner, Zinzi Coogler, appears to be following a similar path, as she was not included on this year’s invite list after making history as the first Filipina nominated for best picture and only the third Black woman recognized in the category. Together, the Cooglers became the first Black married couple to receive Oscar nominations, while “Sinners” went on to become the most-nominated film in Academy Awards history.
As is customary, membership remains a matter of sponsorship rather than application, administered across the Academy’s 19 branches and a single membership classification. Oscar nominees are automatically considered in the year of their nomination and require no sponsors; everyone else is vetted by branch executive committees, the Membership Committee and ultimately the Board of Governors. Only those who accept will be added to the rolls this year.
Demographic information, the Academy noted, is supplied by the candidates when possible, projected from publicly available research, and confirmed upon acceptance. The full membership class list is below.
