Before the first celebrity steps onto the red carpet for the 98th Academy Awards on March 15, 2026, and before a single envelope is opened on stage, the most important work of the Academy Awards has already been done—by the voters and the accountants.

Each year, the winners of the Oscars are counted, verified, and sealed by the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), which has overseen the Academy’s voting process since 1935 and has retained the job despite its infamous 2017 envelope mix-up. Thousands of members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences cast votes this year across 24 award categories (including a new one for Best Casting) and PwC is responsible for collecting, verifying, and tabulating those results before preparing the sealed envelopes used during the ceremony.

The Academy first turned to an outside firm in the 1930s because it wanted a neutral third party that it could rely on for both accuracy and confidentiality. Accounting firms were already trusted to audit financial statements, verify complex calculations, and safeguard sensitive client information. In many ways, the Oscar vote count is similar to a specialized assurance engagement: An independent firm verifies the numbers, uses multiple controls to confirm the results, and safeguards the integrity of the process until the outcome is announced publicly.

How Oscar Voting Works

The voting and tallying process has several stages. In some categories, the Academy first runs a preliminary round to create shortlists—for example, in visual effects, sound, and international feature film. Nominations are then decided through a second round of voting, usually by members of the relevant professional branch. The Academy is divided into 19 branches (including actors, directors, writers, editors, and cinematographers) and members of each branch typically nominate candidates within their own discipline. Best Picture nominations are an exception; members from all branches participate in choosing those nominees.

In the final voting round, all eligible Academy members can vote in all 24 categories. The ballots are submitted through a secure online system, and the results are independently tabulated and verified by PwC.

Counting the ballots is a slow process. The tabulation and verification process takes about 1,700 work hours each year and includes multiple review steps to ensure the final results match the underlying ballots.

Why Best Picture Takes Longer to Count

One category in particular requires especially careful attention: Best Picture. Unlike most Oscar categories, which are decided by simple plurality, Best Picture uses a preferential ballot system (similar to ranked-choice voting). Academy voters rank the nominated films in order of preference. If no film receives more than 50% of the first-place votes, the film with the fewest first-place votes is eliminated, and those ballots are redistributed based on voters’ next choices. The process repeats until one film reaches a majority.

Because the Best Picture count can involve multiple rounds, the results are reviewed several times to confirm that the final winner has received a true majority of the vote.

The Secret Inside the Envelope

Once the results are final, the winners’ names are placed into the Academy’s famous envelopes (more on those in a moment). Two identical sets of envelopes are prepared—one for each side of the stage on the night of the ceremony.

Historically, secrecy has been so strict that the final results are not widely documented outside the envelopes themselves. The results are recorded—nowhere. After the count and the recount, the PwC partners overseeing the process commit the winners to memory before sealing the envelopes. They do not write down the winners’ names or keep a tally on paper.

The envelopes are then placed into briefcases, which are hidden away in a top-secret location. On the day of the show, the two briefcases are placed into two different cars that take two different routes to the Dolby Theatre. (Yes, it sounds exactly like a spy movie.)

Those briefcases remain under the control of the PwC partners assigned to the ceremony and are delivered to the theater shortly before the show begins. Not even the show's producers or the President of the Academy—currently Lynette Howell Taylor—are told who will take home the Oscar statuettes.

(And because I know you're wondering: even though the number of categories is known in advance, the possibility of ties and of multiple recipients sharing the award means that they don't know the exact number of statuettes to be awarded, so the Academy has extras on hand.)

Backstage on Oscar Night

During the broadcast, two accountants remain backstage rather than sitting in the audience. Each partner stands on an opposite side of the stage—stage right and stage left—so presenters can get the correct envelope regardless of where they enter. The accountants hand envelopes to presenters before they walk onstage, then listen carefully as the winners are announced. If a mistake happens, they must notify the show’s producers and stage managers.

That behind-the-scenes role took center stage during the 2017 ceremony. For a few surreal moments that night, it seemed that the film La La Land had won Best Picture. Presenter Warren Beatty approached the microphone and started reading the card before pausing in confusion. His co-presenter, Faye Dunaway, then announced La La Land as the winner, and the stage quickly filled with the film’s cast and producers.

But as acceptance speeches began, something wasn’t right. La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz interrupted. "I'm sorry, there's a mistake,” he told the audience. “Moonlight, you guys won best picture." Amid the confusion, producer Marc Platt reiterated, "This is not a joke. They read the wrong thing.”

Horowitz then held up the card for the cameras to see: Moonlight.

The confusion stemmed from a simple but critical mistake. The presenters had been handed the wrong envelope—one containing the Best Actress card, which read “Emma Stone, La La Land.” Allegedly, the swap happened because one of the accountants was distracted by his cell phone while tweeting about the ceremony. Because the Oscars use two complete sets of envelopes, the duplicate Best Actress envelope had been mistakenly given to the presenters instead of the Best Picture envelope.

PwC later apologized for the mistake, calling it a result of human error. After the mix-up, the Academy and PwC implemented additional safeguards, such as banning cell phones backstage, requiring presenters to verify their envelope contents before walking onstage, and creating procedures to fix mistakes more quickly. The PwC partners now attend production rehearsals to become more integrated with the show’s backstage flow and stage management, and a third PwC partner now also sits in the control room with producers, just in case something goes wrong.

Designing the Oscar Envelope

There has also been a paper-based adjustment. The envelopes are produced exclusively by Marc Friedland Couture Communications, which has been making them since 2011. They’re handmade with custom calligraphy-style typography and they also prominently display the category name—an adjustment made after the 2017 mix-up to make them easier to read backstage. The envelopes are also numbered and tracked as part of the show’s production inventory, mirroring the chain-of-custody controls used by accountants during audits.

Those secrecy controls still remain. While Friedland’s studio produces the envelopes and nominee cards, the firm does not know the winners. PwC receives the materials and inserts the winning card after the final vote count.

Why the Oscars Still Use Paper

Even as many aspects of the ceremony have modernized, one element remains deliberately analog: the envelope. In an age when everything feels paperless—even the IRS—there’s something comforting and tangible about paper.

In this case, the paper-based reveal provides security. There are no servers to hack, no databases to leak, and no digital results that can be accessed early. And, the envelopes also serve a theatrical role. The moment when a presenter opens the card and says, “And the Oscar goes to…” has become one of the most familiar rituals in live television.

Nearly ninety years after accountants were first brought in to safeguard the vote, the process remains largely unchanged (with a few tweaks). The ballots are counted, the envelopes are sealed, and somewhere backstage, accountants wait quietly with the answers.

Maybe viewers tune in for the speeches or the fashion. But mostly, they want to know what’s in the envelope.

© Forbes