BAFTA Awards: What you need to know about the rules

The BAFTA Awards — the annual honors bestowed upon the year’s top films and performances by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts — tend to get a lot of attention every year because of where they land on the awards calendar — on the eve of Oscar voting. So ahead, we break down everything you need to know about the BAFTA Awards — who votes, how they vote, and why they matter.

When are the BAFTA Awards?

The 2025 BAFTA Awards take place on Sunday, February 16, 2025, just two days before the final 2025 Oscar winner voting ends. That makes the BAFTA results more important than ever in terms of the Academy Awards – particularly for those Oscar voters who wait until the last minute to cast their ballots and love to back a winner. Last year, the BAFTA Awards matched the eventual Oscar winners in the top categories eight-for-eight.

So does that mean the BAFTA Awards are historically the most reliable Oscars precursor?

Not even a little bit. In 2023, the BAFTA Award winners were an island unto themselves: The Oscars and BAFTAs split all eight top categories as “Everything Everywhere All at Once” dominated the U.S. ceremony while “All Quiet on the Western Front” was the big winner in England. In fact, for decades, the BAFTA Awards ceremony didn’t even happen until the spring, well after the Oscars had been decided. But starting in 2001, the BAFTA Awards moved forward to precede the Oscars. 

So, how does BAFTA voting really work?

The good news is that It used to be a lot more complicated. In 2020, years after the Academy Awards faced an #OscarsSoWhite controversy that pushed the Academy to diversify its membership, the BAFTA Awards had its own #sowhite controversy. That year, zero non-white actors received acting nominations, and Sam Mendes’s “1917” won top honors over Bong Joon-Ho’s “Parasite.” (“Parasite” won Best Picture at the Oscars, but only one non-white performer – Cynthia Erivo for “Harriet” – landed an acting nomination.) In response to the uproar, BAFTA organizers vowed to expand membership ranks and instituted a new system to ensure more diversity. It’s complicated and now moot – more on that below – but for acting categories, it once worked as follows:

For round one voting, an acting chapter of at least 100 BAFTA members with relevant experience ranked its top choices from one to 15. The top 12 were then chosen for the longlist. Then, a smaller longlisting jury chose the final three longlist names from the pool of actors ranked 13 to 22. When the nominees were decided in round two voting, another jury selected the six nominees. Then for round three, the entire acting branch voted for the winners.

But even those inscrutable rules kept changing. By 2022, as The Hollywood Reporter noted, “The top three performances in all four performance categories in the round one chapter voting will be automatically nominated, up from two in 2022. The longlisting and nominating jury process remains the same as last year, with the nominating jury selecting the remaining three places on the nominations list (down from four last year) — with the total nominations staying the same at a total of six per category.”

Anyway, it was complicated! But now the BAFTA organizers have simplified the nomination process, deemphasizing the jury system that has led to some unexpected and unpredictable nominees in recent years – including a snub of Lily Gladstone for “Killers of the Flower Moon” last year and Best Actress nominations for Alana Haim (“Licorice Pizza”) and Lady Gaga (“House of Gucci”) in 2022.

According to the official BAFTA rules, the performance categories – Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Supporting Actor – are now voted on “through a combination of jury, Chapter and all film member voting.” 

What does that mean?

It seems intentionally complicated. But we know the juries are small groups of BAFTA members (we don’t know who they are) and the Chapters are larger groups of BAFTA members with “specialized knowledge in a specific craft.”

First up are the BAFTA longlists, announced this year on January 3, 2025. Each acting category longlist will consist of 10 performers. According to BAFTA, “the longlists will continue to be determined by the Acting Chapter and longlisting jury (the jury decides three out of 10 places per category).” From there, round two voting will begin, and the longlist will be winnowed down from 10 to six in each category.

This still sounds pretty complicated. So who actually votes for BAFTA acting nominees?

In a twist from last year, all 24 total acting nominees (six nominees per category) will now be determined by BAFTA’s Acting Chapter, that larger group mentioned before. Previously, three out of six nominees per category were determined by nominating juries, a procedure that arguably created some of the most surprising snubs and surprises of any awards show in recent times.

Who votes for the acting winners?

In the final stage of voting, things get much easier to understand: The winners will continue to be decided by an all-film member vote.

How does BAFTA nominate its Best Director nominees?

This is right from the BAFTA site, so let’s go with that since they know best. For this year and going forward, “the Directing Chapter will determine the longlist and nominations in entirety.” That’s a shift since “juries previously determined six out of 16 places on the longlist as well as four out of six nominations.” Now, the longlist will reduce from 16 to a max of 11 but with the gender parity intervention at the longlisting stage remaining intact. 

How does that play out? 

BAFTA says, “The longlist will comprise of the top women and men directors with gender parity upheld, plus (an update introduced last year) directors who identify as non-binary/gender diverse and any mixed-gender directing teams who rank within the voting results range of the top 10 women/men directors, to a maximum of 11.” That means the directors’ longlist will have an equal number of men and women. The number of final nominations will remain at six. All film voters will continue to decide the winner.

How does BAFTA nominate movies for Best Film?

BAFTA Best Film nominees are also chosen from a longlist but it all works similarly to the performance categories.

So how do the BAFTA Awards affect the Oscars?

Well, the conventional wisdom now suggests that BAFTA voters have a greater impact on the Oscars because the Academy has expanded its membership internationally. It’s anecdotal but it’s easy to imagine a scenario where films like “The Favourite,” “The Father,” “All Quiet on the Western Front,” and “Poor Things” – all features that won major BAFTA Awards before pulling off significant and maybe unexpected Oscar wins – played better to the “BAFTA crowd” than U.S. Academy members.

On the flipside, BAFTA has a historic blindspot around Black performers (Denzel Washington has somehow never received a BAFTA nomination, despite two Oscar wins).

Any predictions for this year’s Oscars then?

As usual, it’s expected the major Oscar contenders will factor into next year’s BAFTA ceremony. That means films like “Anora,” “The Brutalist,” “Conclave,” “Dune: Part Two,” “Emilia Perez,” and “Wicked” should pick up significant nominations and maybe even wins during the February ceremony. 

What are the key dates to know for the BAFTA Awards calendar?

Great question. Find the key dates here.