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A tie at 2026 Oscars for Best Live-Action Short marks 7th such rare award moment

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Kiki Intarasuwan
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Kiki Intarasuwan is a news editor for CBS News & Stations.
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Kiki Intarasuwan

/ CBS News

A tie at the 2026 Oscars on Sunday marked a rare moment for the movie awards ceremony — the seventh time in the academy's history that two awards were given for one category.

As Kumail Nanjiani took the stage to announce the winner for Best Live-Action Short at the 98th annual Academy Awards, the actor and comedian exclaimed: "And the Oscar goes to ... it's a tie. I'm not joking. It's actually a tie."

The Oscars went to "The Singers," a musical comedy, and "Two People Exchanging Saliva," a French-language short drama. First up on stage was the team behind "The Singers."

"A tie, wow. I didn't know that was a thing, a tie, but we're happy to be up here," said "The Singers" director Sam Davis as he accepted the award.

Nanjiani then took the mic again and announced "Two People Exchanging Saliva" as the second winner.

"We love all of our fellow nominees, and we're so, so grateful to everyone who has supported our film," director Natalie Musteata said. "Thank you to the academy ... for supporting a film that is weird and that is queer and that is made by a majority of women."

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At the 2026 Academy Awards there was a tie in the category of Best Live-Action Short. The Oscar went to the teams behind "The Singer," at left, and "Two People Exchanging Saliva," at right. Getty Images

Other ties at the Oscars include Katharine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand

There have been six  over the course of nearly a century.

At the 5th annual Academy Awards, actors Fredric March ("Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde") and Wallace Beery ("The Champ") shared the award.

It was not a true tie, however, as March received one more vote than Beery, according to the Academy. But rules at the time said if the runner-up in any category came within three votes of the winner, they would both get rewarded. The rules have since been changed, and only an exact tie in votes now qualifies for two awards.

In 1949, the documentaries "A Chance to Live" and "So Much for So Little" tied in the short subject category.

In 1968, Katharine Hepburn ("The Lion in Winter") and Barbra Streisand ("Funny Girl") both received Oscars for Best Actress.

In 1986, the Feature Documentary category saw a tie between "Artie Shaw: Time Is All You've Got" and "Down and Out in America."

In 1994, another tie occurred in the Best Live-Action Short category. "Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life" and "Trevor" received the same number of votes from Academy members.

The last tie occurred in 2012 in Sound Editing for "Skyfall" and "Zero Dark Thirty."

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