There are concerns about attacks! Conan O'Brien brings the house down at the Oscars 2026

Oscars 2026: Conan O'Brien strode onto the stage at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood on Sunday evening and wasted no time in announcing the stakes. "I am Conan O'Brien and I am honoured to be the last human host of the Academy Awards," he told the audience assembled for the 98th edition of the ceremony. “Next year it's going to be a Waymo in a tux.”

The opener set a wry, self-aware tone, tuned to the cultural anxieties swirling around an industry increasingly scrutinised for its relationship with artificial intelligence.

Chalamet, the Opera, and the Oscar Night's Best Laugh

The evening's sharpest moment of levity arrived swiftly.

Citing heightened security measures at the venue, Conan O'Brien told the room: "I hear there are concerns about attacks from both the opera and ballet communities." The camera cut immediately to Timothée Chalamet - best actor nominee and, in recent weeks, an unlikely lightning rod for discourse around the fine arts - dissolving into laughter.

O'Brien landed the follow-up without pause: "It's his first time in a theatre!"

The quip landed squarely because it needed no explanation. In the weeks preceding the ceremony, Chalamet's widely circulated remarks about opera and ballet had become precisely the sort of cultural kindling that sustains industry conversation until the awards themselves arrive to extinguish it.

A Pre-Recorded Opening Bit That Spanned the Nominations

Before the live monologue, a pre-recorded sequence gave Conan O'Brien licence to roam the year's most prominent films. He wore thickly applied make-up to look like Amy Madigan's Aunt Gladys from Weapons. Just minutes after the sketch aired, Madigan won the best supporting actress award for the same role. In the bit, Conan (as Aunt Gladys) was chased by the film's menacing children.

From there, the bit folded him into the broader landscape of the nominations. He was animated into KPop Demon Hunters, faced Chalamet across a table tennis net in Marty Supreme, and sprinted across a Shakespearean stage in Hamnet.

The sequence functioned as both a clip reel and a calling card: irreverent, technically accomplished, and calibrated not to outstay its welcome.

Conan O'Brien's Return: From Wildfire Displacement to a Second Hosting Stint

O'Brien's return to the podium was, by most accounts, inevitable. After drawing strong reviews for his debut as host at last year's 97th ceremony, he was rehired almost immediately, a relative rarity for a role that has historically cycled through talent with considerable uncertainty.

The 62-year-old, a former writer for Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons, a longtime talk show host across multiple networks, and, latterly, a prominent podcaster, had the unusual luxury of nearly a full year to prepare for the second outing.

Last year, the preparations had been conducted under considerably more fraught circumstances. O'Brien was among those displaced from their homes by the Los Angeles-area wildfires that swept through the region in the weeks before the ceremony. "This year I got to wake up in my room," he noted earlier in the week.

Oscars Hosting: Stability After Years of Uncertainty

O'Brien's consecutive appearances represent something the Academy Awards have struggled to offer in the hosting role for some years: continuity. Between 2019 and 2021, the ceremony proceeded without any host at all, the result of an extended period of institutional indecision following a controversy that led to Kevin Hart's withdrawal. ABC subsequently persuaded Jimmy Kimmel to anchor the show on four occasions, an arrangement unlikely to be repeated, given the ceremony's impending migration from the network to YouTube.

Whether O'Brien continues into a third year remains to be seen. But on a night when artificial intelligence was both the punchline and the subtext, there was a certain satisfaction in watching a thoroughly human comedian remind a room full of film-makers — politely, and with considerable wit - that the handover has not yet occurred.