Key Takeaways
- Award Achievement: Lugwig Göransson won the best original music prize for Sinners at the 2026 BAFTAs.
- Previous Wins: This marks Göransson’s second win in three years, having won in 2024 for Oppenheimer.
- Notable Nominees: Other nominees included Jonny Greenwood and Max Richter, with all five nominated composers also up for Academy Awards.
- Performance Highlights: HUNTR/X made their debut performance at the BAFTAs with “Golden” from KPop Demon Hunters.
Lugwig Göransson’s score for Sinners scooped the best original music prize at the 2026 BAFTAs in London on Sunday (Feb. 22).
It’s the second time in three years that the Swedish composer has collected the prize, having previously won the category in 2024 for his work for Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. Daniel Blumberg won the 2025 award for The Brutalist.
Göransson is the first composer to prevail twice inside of three years since Gustavo Santaolalla won for The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) and Babel (2006). In the build-up to the BAFTAs, Göransson won in the score category at the Critics Choice Awards, Golden Globes and Grammys.
Göransson saw off fierce competition, including Alexandre Desplat, a 13-time nominee and three-time winner of the category; the latter was nominated for his score for Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein. The composer was not on hand to collect the award with Sinners director Ryan Coogler joking that he was away working on a “small indie film” called The Odyssey, in reference to Nolan’s upcoming epic, due this summer.
Other nominees in the category were Jonny Greenwood (One Battle After Another), Max Richter (Hamnet), and Jerskin Fendrix (Bugonia). The same five composers are nominated at the upcoming Academy Awards (March 1), the first time in 14 years that the two awards shows have shared the exact same nominees. In 2012, the winners were split: Thomas Newman won the BAFTA for Skyfall and Mychael Danna took the Oscar for The Life of Pi.
Sinners earned 13 nominations across the categories and came away with two additional awards: best original screenplay and best supporting actress (Wunmi Mosaku). One Battle After Another earned the coveted best film title, with best director going to Paul Thomas Anderson for his work on the flick.
Elsewhere in the ceremony, HUNTR/X made their awards show debut with a performance of KPop Demon Hunters megahit “Golden.” The BAFTAs, unlike the Academy Awards and other awards shows, do not host a best original song category. Next Saturday (Feb. 28) they will perform at the BRIT Awards, and become the first K-pop group to grace the BRITs stage. They’ll also perform at the Academy Awards on March 15, where “Golden” is nominated for best original song.
Jessie Ware performed a Barbra Streisand classic during the In Memoriam section. The English singer took on “The Way We Were” from the 1973 film of the same name, in which Streisand starred with the late Robert Redford. The latter was one of the huge names honored in the segment which also paid tribute to Catherine O’Hara, Rob Reiner, Brigitte Bardot, Val Kilmer and Gene Hackman.
