There was a time when it was hard to imagine the Oscars animation categories without at least a nomination for Disney. The studio has won Best Animated Feature four times and has been nominated 13 times (not including Pixar films). But the 2025 Oscars will be the third year in a row that it's been snubbed.
Disney subsidiary Pixar's Inside Out 2 is on the shortlist, but there's no space for Disney’s own Moana 2. And that's no bad thing. The animation giant's absence in recent years has led to a more diverse range of contenders, with Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio winning in 2023 and Hayao Miyazaki's The Boy and the Heron in 2024.
This year there's a strong pack of Best Animated Feature nominations. I'm delighted to see Gints Zilbalodis’ Flow as well as Memoir of a Snail on the shortlist alongside more mainstream productions like The Wild Robot and Aardman's Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl. Flow is also up for Best International Feature (Latvia's first ever nomination), and The Wild Robot has nominations for Best Music and Best Sound.
As for VFX, three of the five VFX nominations were on our own pick of the best movie VFX of 2024. Here are the full shortlist for the animation and VFX categories.
Oscars 2025: Best Animated Feature nominations
Flow (Janus Films/Sideshow, director: Gints Zilbalodis)
Inside Out 2 (Disney/Pixar, director: Kelsey Mann)
Memoir of a Snail (IFC Films, director: Adam Elliot)
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (Aardman Animations, directors: Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham)
The Wild Robot (Universal/DreamWorks, director: Chris Sanders)
Oscars 2025: Best Animated Short nominations
Beautiful Men (Nicolas Keppens)
In the Shadow of the Cypress (Hossein Molayemi, Shirin Sohani)
Magic Candies (Daisuke Nishio)
Wander to Wonder (Nina Gantz)
Yuck! (Loïc Espuche)
Oscars 2025 Best Visual Effects nominations
Alien: Romulus (20th Century – Eric Barba, Nelson Sepulveda-Fauser, Daniel Macarin, Shane Mahan)
Better Man (Paramount - Luke Millar, David Clayton, Keith Herft, Peter Stubbs)
Dune, Part Two (Warner Bros – Paul Lambert, Stephen James, Rhys Salcombe, Gerd Nefzer)
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (20th Century – Erik Winquist, Stephen Unterfranz, Paul Story, Rodney Burke)
Wicked (Universal – Pablo Helman, Jonathan Fawkner, David Shirk, Paul Corbould)
The 97th edition of the Academy Awards will take place on Sunday 2 March at the Dolby Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center in Hollywood. You can see the nominations in the other categories at the Oscars website.
For more on animation, see our guide to the best animation styles. And if you're looking for kit for your own animation work see our guide to the best animation software and the best laptop for animation.
