Conan O’Brien will host the Academy Awards for a third straight year, giving the 99th Oscars a familiar comic lead as the film academy tries to steady its biggest broadcast before a major distribution shift. The Academy said Tuesday that O’Brien will return for the March 14, 2027 ceremony, which will air live on ABC and Hulu from the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood.
The announcement keeps the core creative team intact. Raj Kapoor and Katy Mullan will return as executive producers for a fourth consecutive year, with Jeff Ross and Mike Sweeney back as producers for a third time. Sweeney will also write for the show. Academy leaders Bill Kramer and Lynette Howell Taylor praised the group’s last two ceremonies and said O’Brien would lead the night with “brilliance and humor.”
The decision reflects both confidence and caution. O’Brien’s first Oscars telecast in 2025 drew 19.7 million viewers, a five-year high, then the 2026 ceremony slipped to 17.9 million, according to Nielsen data cited by Reuters. Awards shows still face shrinking linear audiences, yet O’Brien has given the Oscars a stable identity at a time when many live events chase younger viewers across clips, streaming and social platforms.
Disney Television Group president Craig Erwich said O’Brien has created “remarkable energy around the Oscars,” crediting his comic voice with helping make the ceremony feel entertaining again. The Academy also pointed to stronger digital performance from the 2026 broadcast, with social media engagement up by over 42 percent from the prior year.
The 2027 show will arrive during the final stretch of ABC’s long Oscars tenure. The 100th Academy Awards in 2028 will be the network’s last scheduled broadcast before the ceremony moves to YouTube in 2029 under a global streaming deal. That shift raises the stakes for the next two telecasts: the Academy must preserve the prestige of a legacy broadcast while preparing the show for a digital audience that consumes major entertainment events in a different rhythm.
