MUAHS Awards 2026: Sinners, Frankenstein and One Battle After Another Swept the Film Categories — Full Winners List

The MUAHS Awards 2026 delivered one of the cleanest sweeps in recent memory — and if history is any guide, it just told us something very useful about the Oscars.

The 13th Annual Make-Up Artists & Hair Stylists Guild Awards took place on Valentine’s Day — Saturday, February 14, 2026 — at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles, hosted by Rachael Harris before a crowd of over 850 attendees and livestreamed worldwide. And the film categories were dominated by three Best Picture Oscar nominees: Sinners (Warner Bros., nominated for a record 16 Oscars), One Battle After Another (Warner Bros., up for 13), and Netflix’s Frankenstein. Each claimed exactly the categories you’d expect from their visual identity — and together they’ve set up a compelling two-horse Oscar race for Best Makeup and Hairstyling.

On the TV side: The Studio, Palm Royale, and Saturday Night Live each took two awards. Skeleton Crew swept the Children and Teen categories. And the honorary awards honoured three careers that span six decades of the craft — including the man who put the makeup on Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” zombies.

Here is the complete breakdown — every winner, every artist, every category, and what it all means for the Academy Awards on March 8.

MUAHS Awards 2026 — Complete Winners at a Glance

Film · The Big Three

Sinners, One Battle After Another, Frankenstein: What Each Win Actually Means

Sinners — Best Period and/or Character Make-Up + Best Period and/or Character Hair Styling

Sinners was always going to be the film that defined the MUAHS Awards this year — and it delivered. Ryan Coogler’s vampire thriller set in 1930s Mississippi Delta demanded a specific kind of period authenticity: Black Southern aesthetics of the Jim Crow era, the visual world of juke joints and cotton fields and the blues, rendered with historical precision for an audience that notices when period work rings false.

The film’s makeup team — led by Ken Diaz, a veteran whose credits include Black Panther, Us, and Get Out — worked alongside a predominantly Black crew to ensure the period looks were rooted in genuine research rather than Hollywood shorthand. The result was recognised with a record 16 Oscar nominations, including a Best Makeup and Hairstyling nod. The MUAHS double win has now made Sinners a legitimate contender for that Oscar, though Frankenstein enters the night as the favourite according to current Gold Derby prediction data.

Frankenstein — Best Special Make-Up Prosthetics

Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein winning in the Special Make-Up Prosthetics category is the result most Oscar watchers have been watching most closely. The creature design in this film — created by prosthetics designer Mike Hill, known for his work on del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shape of Water, and Pinocchio — represents a deliberately practical approach to a character that modern productions typically handle digitally. Hill constructed physical prosthetics worn by the actor, creating a creature that moves with organic weight and texture in ways that CGI alternatives rarely achieve.

Frankenstein on IMDb carries its Oscar nomination alongside Sinners, with Gold Derby currently listing it as the frontrunner for Best Makeup and Hairstyling on March 8. The MUAHS win in Prosthetics — the single category most directly relevant to Oscar voters assessing creature and transformation work — significantly strengthens that position.

One Battle After Another — Best Contemporary Make-Up + Best Contemporary Hair Styling

The two contemporary wins for One Battle After Another are a different kind of recognition. Where Sinners and Frankenstein won in categories that showcase visible transformation, contemporary makeup and hair work wins by disappearing — by making characters look real without revealing the effort. The film, Paul Thomas Anderson’s sprawling drama nominated for 13 Oscars, features a cast of characters whose appearances shift across decades and circumstances, requiring continuity precision and character-driven design choices that the guild’s voters clearly found exceptional. The film is not in the Oscar makeup race — it made the Academy’s shortlist but not the final nominations — making the MUAHS double win an industry recognition without Oscar implications.

Television

MUAHS Awards 2026 TV Winners: The Studio, Palm Royale, SNL, and Skeleton Crew

Apple TV+ had the strongest TV night — The Studio and Palm Royale together accounting for four awards. The Studio‘s contemporary wins reflect the show’s commitment to a naturalistic visual language, while Palm Royale‘s period wins are completely earned: the show’s 1960s Palm Beach aesthetic is one of the most meticulously researched and consistently executed period looks in recent television, and the guild’s voters clearly appreciated the level of historical specificity involved.

SNL’s three wins — including one dedicated to the 50th Anniversary Special — are a testament to the show’s enduring technical excellence under extreme live-production conditions. The makeup and hair teams on SNL work across four days to prep dozens of looks for hosts and cast, often creating elaborate period or character transformations that have to be camera-ready for a live broadcast. That consistency over five decades, recognised here in the anniversary year, is genuinely remarkable. Follow us on Instagram for live updates from all awards season ceremonies.

Stranger Things Season 5‘s win for TV Special Prosthetics — awarded to Barrie Gower, Mike Mekash, and Duncan Jarman — caps the franchise’s creature design legacy on a high note, as the final season brought back the Demogorgon, the Mind Flayer variants, and the Upside Down’s grotesque visual ecosystem one last time. The practical prosthetics work across Stranger Things’ run has been one of Netflix’s most consistent technical achievements.

Skeleton Crew‘s sweep of both Children and Teen categories is the Star Wars series’ biggest awards recognition to date — a signal that the show’s alien creature designs and Jedi-era aesthetic choices resonated with craft voters even if its audience numbers were modest by franchise standards.

Beyond the Categories

The Honorary Awards: Six Decades of the Craft Celebrated in One Evening

Greg Nelson’s career alone is a tour through the last 45 years of Hollywood history. He began on Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull — the film that gave Robert De Niro his only Best Actor Oscar. Three years later, he was helping build the dancing undead for Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” one of the most-watched pieces of filmed entertainment in history. Then Batman’s dark prosthetic design. Then Meryl Streep in Death Becomes Her. Then back-to-back Emmys on Star Trek: Voyager. A career of that breadth, honoured here for lifetime achievement, is a reminder of how much the craft’s most dedicated practitioners have shaped our visual experience of the last half century.

Judy Alexander Cory’s timeline is if anything more extraordinary — MUAHS member since 1965, working across six decades from a young Elvis Presley to the digital revolution of The Matrix. Her two consecutive Oscar nominations for Forrest Gump and Schindler’s List — both of which won Best Picture — represent a level of sustained excellence that very few artists in any craft category can match.

The Oscar Picture

What the MUAHS Results Mean for the Best Makeup and Hairstyling Oscar

This is the question that every awards-season observer was watching the MUAHS to answer. The Oscars’ Best Makeup and Hairstyling race for the March 8 ceremony features five nominees: Sinners, Frankenstein, Japan’s Kokuho, The Smashing Machine, and body horror film The Ugly Stepsister.

*Gold Derby prediction data as of February 15, 2026

The historical pattern is instructive: since 2016, a MUAHS winner has gone on to win the makeup Oscar in all but two years. Both Sinners and Frankenstein won MUAHS awards. Frankenstein’s win came in the Prosthetics category — which has historically been the strongest predictor of Oscar victory, with seven of the Best Makeup Oscar winners since 2016 having first won the MUAHS Prosthetics award. That pattern makes Frankenstein the current favourite heading into Oscar night, but Sinners’ double win and its overall awards momentum — 16 nominations, a cultural moment that has defined the 2025-26 season — make this one of the more genuinely competitive makeup races in years. Save our full awards season tracker to Pinterest to follow every category to Oscar night.

Which film’s makeup work impressed you most this year — Sinners, Frankenstein, or One Battle After Another? And who do you think takes the Oscar on March 8? Tell us in the comments.

Emily

Popcorn in hand and a opinion ready — Emily covers movie reviews, box office buzz, and all things cinema at Popcorn Review.