The British Academy has unveiled new changes to its film awards eligibility and voting rules going into the 2027 awards, which are small tweaks compared to the substantial edits recently made by AMPAS for the Oscars.
Among the major alterations is with the Outstanding British Film category, which now sees the longlist after the first round of voting expanded from 15 films to 20. The category will retain 10 nominations, with five chosen by the membership vote and five by the nominating jury.
“We just wanted to widen the pool for consideration and to get more members watching more British films and voting on them,” said BAFTA‘s executive director of awards and content Emma Baehr. “For us, it’s a celebration — it’s our flagship category.”
Another tweak comes in the performance categories, where members of BAFTA’s casting chapter will now be invited to vote alongside the acting chapter in the longlisting and nominations rounds. The decision here was more to help “increase the expertise,” says Baehr, who notes that there are more than 700 performance candidates to consider across four categories, which close a week earlier than the others. “So it’s really important that we keep that engagement up.”
