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2026 Oscars | 3 Animated Shorts Absent From 113 Submissions

NickSpake

November 23, 2025 • 4:01PM

^{Credit: The Bad Guys: Little Lies and Alibis (DreamWorks Animation), Order Up (Paramount), ParaNorman: The Thrifting! (Laika).}

113 animated shorts have been submitted for consideration at the 98^th Academy Awards. This year’s lineup offers a wide range of stories and techniques from independent filmmakers, as well as major studios like Disney, DreamWorks, Locksmith, and Cartoon Saloon. Yet, there are three notable absences. The Bad Guys: Little Lies and Alibis, the SpongeBob short Order Up, and ParaNorman: The Thrifting! all played in theaters this past year. Yet, the studios seemingly neglected to submit them for Best Animated Short.

The Bad Guys: Little Lies and Alibis played theatrically with the DreamWorks feature Dog Man, meeting one of the Oscars’ eligibility routes. Perhaps DreamWorks didn’t want Little Lies and Alibis to potentially take votes away from the studio’s other short, Wednesdays with Gramps. Where Little Lies and Alibis is a tie-in short, Wednesdays with Gramps is an original piece, which is more inclined to resonate with voters. Little Lies and Alibis also leans comedic, whereas brothers Chris and Justin Copeland took a more emotional route with Wednesdays with Gramps. Plus, The Bad Guys franchise could still get a nomination this year, with its sequel among the thirty-five Best Animated Feature submissions.

Order Up is a unique case, as the two-minute short was initially produced over a decade ago, but it didn’t see the light of day until it played theatrically with Paramount Animation’s Smurfs. One might argue that the SpongeBob short is more like a brief TV episode. Still, its wide theatrical distribution would’ve made it eligible for Oscar consideration. Then again, Paramount didn’t even bother to submit Smurfs for Best Animated Feature. Paramount is probably prioritizing the short Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Chrome Alone 2 – Lost in New Jersey, which is getting a theatrical release with the feature, The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants.

ParaNorman: The Thrifting!, a CG short from Laika, accompanied the rerelease of the 2012 stop-motion feature. In October, The Thrifting was included on Cartoon Contender’s 21 Potential Best Animated Short Contenders. This came with an asterisk, as it was unclear at the time if Laika would keep The Thrifting in theaters long enough to qualify. They seemingly did, as Laika’s website says that the ParaNorman rerelease ran in the U.S. from October 25 to 31. This coincides with the Academy’s rules that publicly exhibited shorts have “a run of at least seven consecutive days with at least one screening a day.” For whatever reason, though, it wasn’t submitted at the Oscars.

Even with these three missing out, the competition for Best Animated Short is stacked this year. From the 113 submissions, fifteen will be shortlisted on December 16, 2025. The five nominees will then be announced on January 22, 2026. Check out the full list of submissions below, along with our interviews with several filmmakers:

Ahimsa

All Heart

Always & Forever

As If The Earth Had Swallowed Them Up (Como si la tierra se las hubiera tragado)

Autokar

Balconies

Black Man, Black Man

Bound

Brown Morning

Budō

The Burial of Natty Bumppo

Butterfly