In November, before this year’s torrent of animated shorts had settled into a proper Oscar race, we surveyed some of the films that were likely to be competing for a golden statuette. With the qualifying period now over, we can reveal that 96 short films are on the longlist.

We are publishing the list below, in alphabetical order. It has been compiled using public information and confirmed by sources within the Academy. Having compared the list to our research from previous years, we believe that 96 qualified animated shorts is an Academy record, but haven’t confirmed this.

To recap: a short can become eligible for an Oscar in one of three ways. It has to be publicly exhibited in a theater in L.A. or New York City under certain conditions, or take home an award at a designated “qualifying” festival (see the list here), or win at the Student Academy Awards. The filmmakers must then submit it to the Academy. The pandemic played havoc with the festival circuit, postponing some events and cancelling others, but this doesn’t seem to have had a significant impact on the qualifications — record or not, 96 is a high number.

Shorts are where some of the most beautiful, innovative, and distinctive animation can be found. Yet many remain inaccessible to the general public while on their festival run (even if the rise of virtual festivals last year changed that somewhat).

This Oscar category doesn’t enjoy much visibility — year after year, few outside (or even in) the industry have a clear idea of what’s in the running. As the Academy has looked at shortening its telecast, the animation short category has often been rumored to be one of the categories that it would eliminate from its live broadcast. We’re publishing the list in order to draw attention to the sheer diversity of animated short filmmaking, and to spark debate among the animation community, and hopefully beyond, about the films that should be considered for an Oscar.

Note that the information regarding how each film qualified comes from our own research; it is neither complete nor confirmed, but we will continue to update this post to ensure that the data is as complete and accurate as possible.

Here are the films that qualified in 2020.