Demon Slayer and Chainsaw Man Movies Confirmed Elibigle for the 2026 Oscars
The Demon Slayer and Chainsaw Man films have been confirmed eligibile for the Animated Film Feature Category of the 2026 Oscars, a category that saw only two Japanese films secure a win.
On November 23, 2025, it has been confirmed after much demand that Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle has been considered eligible for the 98th Academy Awards in the Animated Film Feature Category.
Alongside Demon Slayer, two more notable anime entries have been included: Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc (Tatsuya Yoshihara/MAPPA) and Scarlet (Mamoru Hosoda/Studio Chizu)
They are also joined by the massive Netflix animated hit, K-Pop Demon Hunters.
Other eligible entries include:
- “All Operators Are Currently Unavailable”
- “Arco”
- “The Bad Guys 2”
- “Black Butterflies”
- “Boys Go to Jupiter”
- “ChaO”
- “Colorful Stage! The Movie: A Miku Who Can’t Sing”
- “David”
- “Dog Man”
- “Dog of God”
- “Dragon Heart – Adventures Beyond This World”
- “Elio”
- “Endless Cookie”
- “Fixed”
- “Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie”
- “In Your Dreams”
- “The Legend of Hei 2”
- “Light of the World”
- “Little Amélie or the Character of Rain”
- “Lost in Starlight”
- “A Magnificent Life”
- “Mahavatar Narsimha”
- “Night of the Zoopocalypse”
- “Olivia & las Nubes”
- “100 Meters”
- “Out of the Nest”
Should K-Pop Demon Hunters or the other anime entries be nominated for the Oscar, it will be the seventh time an Asian animated film has made that distinction, with six of those times coming from Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli.
If any of the anime entries win the Oscar, it will be the third time an animated film from Asia will make such a landmark, as Spirited Away (2002) and The Boy and the Heron (2023) by Miyazaki have done.
In either case, 2026 would mark a potential first year where an Asian animated film not from Studio Ghibli or even Japan is considered.
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle is dominating the box office as the highest-grossing Japanese film of all time and the fifth-highest-grossing film of 2025, having reached $ 730 million in total.
Meanwhile, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc has reached $168.3 million and is now the 16th highest-grossing Japanese film of all time and Studio MAPPA’s second highest-grossing film, just below Jujutsu Kaisen 0 (2021).
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