Apple Just Won its First Oscar in Three years, and F1: The Movie Made it Happen

Apple walked into the 98th Academy Awards with something it has not had much of lately: real momentum.

And this time, it actually turned that momentum into a win.

F1: The Movie gave Apple its first Academy Award in three years by taking home Best Sound, marking a meaningful moment for the company’s movie ambitions. It is not Best Picture, sure, but for Apple, this still feels like a big deal.

That is especially true because F1 has already been a massive success in other ways too. It became Apple’s biggest theatrical win ever, turned into the highest-grossing sports film of all time, and now it gets to add “Oscar winner” to the list. That is a pretty incredible run for a movie that helped prove Apple can do more than just make prestige films people admire from a distance.

F1 gives Apple a Badly Needed Oscars Win

At last night’s ceremony, F1: The Movie won Best Sound, beating out a field that included Frankenstein, One Battle After Another, Sinners, and Sirāt.

That win matters more than it might seem at first glance.

Apple has had a weird relationship with the Oscars lately. There was a time when it looked like the company might become an awards-season powerhouse almost overnight. Then things cooled off. Fast.

This year, Apple had six nominations in total, which already represented a noticeable comeback after 2025 brought zero nominations for any of its films.

Here is how those nominations broke down:

F1: The Movie: Best Picture, Best Sound, Best Visual Effects, Best Editing
The Lost Bus: Best Visual Effects
Come See Me in the Good Light: Best Documentary Feature Film

So while F1 was the only film to actually bring home a trophy, it was clearly doing the heavy lifting for Apple across the board.

A Much Better Outcome Than The Last Two Years

What makes this win stand out even more is Apple’s recent Oscars history.

In 2024, Apple showed up with 13 nominations, led by Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. On paper, that looked like a huge night in the making. In practice, Apple left empty-handed.

Before this latest win, the company’s most recent Oscar came in 2023, when The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse won Best Animated Short Film.

And of course, the high-water mark for Apple remains 2022, when CODA won Best Picture. That was not just a win for Apple. It was a historic moment, becoming the first streaming service-backed film to take home the Academy’s biggest prize.

That set an incredibly high bar. And for a while, Apple has not looked especially close to matching it.

That is why F1 feels important.

Apple’s movie strategy may finally be clicking

For the past couple of years, Apple’s film approach has clearly been evolving.

There was a phase where the company seemed focused on prestige above all else. Big directors. Big budgets. Big awards hopes. But that strategy did not always translate into the kind of cultural impact or box office performance you would expect.

F1: The Movie looks a lot more like the version of Apple’s film business that actually works.

It is crowd-pleasing. It has scale. It plays well in theaters. And now it has awards recognition too.

That combination is probably exactly what Apple has been hoping for.

An Oscar for sound is not the same as sweeping the major categories, but it does signal that Apple is back in the conversation. And honestly, that may be the biggest takeaway here. After a couple of uneven years, Apple finally has a movie that feels like a full-spectrum success.

Could this be the start of a bigger Oscars comeback?

That is the real question now.

Apple still has a lot to prove if it wants to become a consistent Oscars force rather than a company that pops up every few years with one major contender. But F1 shows the studio side of Apple is still very capable of producing serious winners when the right project comes along.

And with a new lineup of films still on the way to Apple TV this year, the company has another chance to build on this momentum rather than letting it fade.

For now, though, Apple can celebrate something it has not been able to say since 2023:

It is an Oscar winner again.

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Jamie Spencer

Jamie has been blogging about tech, making money online and entrepreneurship for the past 12 years. He is the proud owner of hugely successful website makeawebsitehub.com and has helped over 20k people start their own blogs.