Academy Award for Best Visual Effects

The Academy Award for Best Visual Effects is given out each year by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for top work in visual effects. Since 1980, it has gone to four people from the team that made the film’s visual effects.

The Academy first acknowledged special effects at its 1929 dinner, awarding a plaque for "Best Engineering Effects" to Wings, the first Best Picture winner. In the early 1930s, producer David O. Selznick pushed for recognition of Willis O’Brien’s work on King Kong (1933), but no category existed. The first film to get an effects award was Spawn of the North in 1938, via a Special Achievement Award. The next year, "Best Special Effects" became a regular category, though sometimes only one film was honored instead of multiple nominees. From 1939 to 1963, the award covered both visual and audio effects, often given to two people; some years only one type was recognized. At the 22nd Academy Awards, Mighty Joe Young (1949) won, and Willis H. O’Brien accepted the statue. In 1964, the award was restricted to visual effects, and the next year it was renamed "Best Special Visual Effects." The category became "Best Visual Effects" in 1977. For many years, a steering committee chose finalists; now the visual effects branch executive committee does. 1990 was the last year with no official nominees—Back to the Future Part III, Dick Tracy, Ghost, and Total Recall advanced to a second vote, but only Total Recall got the required average and received a special achievement Oscar.

Three fully animated films have been nominated: The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), Kubo and the Two Strings (2016), and The Lion King (2019). Three semi-animated films have won: Mary Poppins (1964), Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), and Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). In 2024, Godzilla Minus One became the first non-English-language film to win.

In 1979, five films were nominated. For most of the next three decades, there were three nominees per year, though sometimes two or just one. Starting in 2007, a list of up to 15 eligible films was chosen, from which a maximum of seven were shortlisted, then a vote produced up to three nominees. Since 2010, ten finalists are shortlisted, and range voting yields five nominees. No more than four people can be nominated per film.