Academy Award for Best Animated Feature facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Academy Award for Best Animated Feature
Gints Zilbalodis Matīss Kaža 2025 co-recipients
Presented by	Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS)
Country	United States
First awarded	Shrek (2001)
Currently held by	Flow (2024)

The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature is a special prize given out every year by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It celebrates the best animated feature film of the year.

What makes a movie an "animated feature" for this award? It needs to be longer than 40 minutes. Most of the main characters must be animated using a frame-by-frame technique. Also, at least 75% of the movie's total time needs to be animation. This award was first given out in 2002 for movies released in 2001.

For a long time, the Academy didn't have a regular award for animated movies. They thought not enough animated films were made each year. Instead, they sometimes gave special Oscars for amazing animated movies. For example, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs got an Academy Honorary Award in 1938. Later, Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1989) and Toy Story (1996) received Special Achievement Academy Awards. Before this award existed, only one animated movie, Disney's Beauty and the Beast (1991), was even nominated for Best Picture.

By 2001, more animation studios like DreamWorks Animation started making many great animated films. This meant there were enough animated movies each year to have their own award. So, the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature was created. It was first presented at the 74th Academy Awards on March 24, 2002.

Winners and Nominees

Hayao Miyazaki won twice for Spirited Away (2002) and The Boy and the Heron (2023).

Andrew Stanton won twice for Finding Nemo (2003) and WALL-E (2008).

Brad Bird won twice for The Incredibles (2004) and Ratatouille (2007).

Nick Park won for Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005).

George Miller won for Happy Feet (2006).

Pete Docter won three times for Up (2009), Inside Out (2015) and Soul (2020).

Lee Unkrich won twice for Toy Story 3 (2010) and Coco (2017).

Gore Verbinski won in 2011 for Rango.

Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman won in 2012 for Brave.

Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee won in 2013 for Frozen.

Jonas Rivera won twice for Inside Out (2015) and Toy Story 4 (2019).

Byron Howard won twice for Zootopia (2016) and Encanto (2022).

Film directors Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman, and producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller won for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018).

Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson won in 2022 for Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio.

Toshio Suzuki won in 2024 for The Boy and the Heron as a film producer.

When the award first started, the people most involved in making the film were nominated. This could be the producer, the director, or both. Over time, the rules changed. For the 76th Academy Awards in 2003, only the director(s) were nominated. Later, for the 86th Academy Awards, one producer and up to two directors could be nominated. For the 91st Academy Awards, up to four people could be nominated, including at least one director and one producer.

The Academy also has a rule that the award won't be given if fewer than eight eligible animated films are released in theaters that year. This helps make sure there are enough movies to choose from.

There's also a rule about "motion capture" films. Motion capture is when actors wear special suits to record their movements, which are then used to animate characters. Movies like A Christmas Carol (2009) and The Adventures of Tintin (2011) used this. The rule says that motion capture by itself isn't considered animation. A film must still have a significant number of animated characters and be at least 75% animation to qualify. This rule helps prevent live-action movies that use a lot of motion capture, like Avatar (2009), from being nominated in this category.

Only a few films have been disqualified for not meeting the 75% animation rule. For example, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2021) had to prove it had enough animation to be considered. It was a stop-motion film with live-action parts. The Academy decided it was eligible, and it was nominated!

2000s Winners and Nominees

2010s Winners and Nominees

2020s Winners and Nominees

Award Records

This section shows some interesting facts and records about the award.

Most Wins and Nominations by Individuals

Most Wins and Nominations by Studios

Most Wins and Nominations by Franchises

Age Records

Film Length Records

International Films

Many films from outside the United States, or films that don't have much dialogue, have been nominated or won this award. Winners are shown in bold. Most non-English films on this list have also been released with English voice-overs.

Japanese Nominees

Studio Ghibli Films

• Spirited Away
• Howl's Moving Castle
• The Wind Rises
• The Tale of the Princess Kaguya
• When Marnie Was There
• The Boy and the Heron

Other Japanese Films

• Mirai

French Nominees

Les Armateurs Films

• The Triplets of Belleville
• Ernest & Celestine

Other French Films

• Persepolis
• The Illusionist
• A Cat in Paris
• My Life as a Zucchini
• I Lost My Body

Other Languages

• Chico and Rita (Spanish)
• Boy and the World (Portuguese)
• Flee (Danish)

Films with No Dialogue or Fictional Languages

• Shaun the Sheep Movie
• The Red Turtle
• A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon
• Robot Dreams
• Flow

Important Milestones and Records

Film Studios and Companies

• Pixar has won the most awards (11) and received the most nominations (19). They also had the longest winning streak, winning four years in a row from 2007 to 2010.
  • Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios are both owned by the Walt Disney Company. Together, they have won 15 awards in this category.
• Laika has the most nominations (6) without ever winning the award.
• DreamWorks Animation has received 10 nominations since their last win.
• The Toy Story series is the only film franchise to win this award twice, with Toy Story 3 and Toy Story 4. These two are also the only sequels to have won the award so far.
• The Shrek and Wallace & Gromit series have the most nominations (4 each), with one win each.
• The "Irish Folklore Trilogy" by Cartoon Saloon (The Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea, and Wolfwalkers) and the How to Train Your Dragon series are the most nominated franchises without a win, with three nominations each.
• The Triplets of Belleville was the first PG-13 rated film to be nominated. Anomalisa and Memoir of a Snail are the only R-rated animated films to be nominated. The Boy and the Heron was the first PG-13 rated film to win.
• Studio Ghibli from Japan has the most wins (two) and nominations (seven) for a non-U.S. studio. Their films Spirited Away and The Boy and the Heron are the only non-English language films to win.
• Flee was the first animated documentary film to be nominated.
• Since 2019, at least one nominated film each year has been mainly released on streaming services. Two of these films have won: Soul (on Disney+) in 2020 and Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (on Netflix) in 2022.
• 2005 and 2011 are the only years when no Disney or Pixar film was nominated in this category.
• Flow is the first independent film to win the award.
• The wins of Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, The Boy and the Heron, and Flow from 2022 to 2024 mark the first time a non-Disney/Pixar film won the award three years in a row.

People Records

• Pete Docter has won the most awards as an individual (3). He is also tied with Hayao Miyazaki and Chris Sanders for the most nominations (4).
• Hayao Miyazaki has the most wins and nominations for someone not from the U.S.
• Chris Sanders has the most nominations (4) without winning the award.
• Hayao Miyazaki became the oldest winner in 2024 at 83 years old.
• Matīss Kaža became the youngest winner in 2025 at 29 years old. Gints Zilbalodis was the second youngest winner at 30 years old.
• Brenda Chapman was the first woman to win for Brave.
• Peter Ramsey was the first Black director to win for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

Award's Impact

Gints Zilbalodis's Academy Award statuette (with Best Animated Feature labeled) was put on display at the Latvian National Museum of Art.

When films from studios other than Disney/Pixar or Dreamworks Animation started winning, it showed how much animated movies were growing. These wins also helped animation get more recognition in mainstream cinema. Sometimes, the Oscar statuettes are even displayed in museums!

• On March 20, 2024, Studio Ghibli displayed Hayao Miyazaki's Oscar statuette for a short time at Ghibli Park in Japan.
• In 2025, after Flow won the Best Animated Feature award, its Oscar statuette was displayed at the Latvian National Museum of Art for a week. The Golden Globe and European Film Award it also won were displayed alongside it.

See also

In Spanish: Anexo:Óscar a la mejor película de animación para niños

• List of submissions for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature
• Lists of animated films
• List of animation awards
• List of animated feature films nominated for Academy Awards
• List of Academy Award–nominated films