2026 Oscar Best Supporting Actor Odds: Sean Penn's Lockjaw Has a Chokehold on the Category
The Oscars are almost here, and you can bet on which films, directors, actors, and actresses you think is going to win on Kalshi. Jack Borovitz breaks down the Kalshi odds for which actor from this year will win Best Supporting Actor.
Jack Borovitz - March 15, 2026, 6:00 PM EDT
6 Minute Read2026 Oscar Best Supporting Actor Odds: Sean Penn's Lockjaw Has a Chokehold on the Category
The Oscars are tonight, and Best Supporting Actor might be the most volatile category heading into the ceremony. Over $5.2 million has been traded on Kalshi, with bettors trying to read a precursor season that fractured early and never fully healed. Sean Penn swept both the BAFTA and the Actor Awards (formerly SAG) for his villain turn in One Battle After Another, and that SAG-to-Oscar pipeline has matched nine straight years. At 77¢ for Yes shares, the betting public followed the momentum. The real question: does Penn collect his third Oscar, or does vote-splitting with co-star Benicio del Toro crack the door for a spoiler?
Bet on Best Supporting Actor with Kalshi Here
Latest Best Supporting Actor Odds From Kalshi
Contestant | Chance |
|---|---|
Sean Penn | 77% |
Stellan Skarsgård | 15% |
Delroy Lindo | 8% |
Benicio del Toro | 2% |
Jacob Elordi | 2% |
Sean Penn (One Battle After Another): 77% Chance
The frontrunner with the hardware to prove it. Penn plays Col. Steven J. Lockjaw, a white supremacist military officer chasing down a revolutionary's daughter in Paul Thomas Anderson's political thriller, and the performance walks a line between genuinely terrifying villainy and cartoonish absurdity that reviewers have been raving about all season. He took home the BAFTA and the Actor Award in back-to-back weekends, and SAG's Supporting Actor pick has matched the Oscar winner nine consecutive years. Penn already has two Best Actor Oscars (Mystic River in 2003, Milk in 2008), so a win here makes him a three-time champion. One wrinkle worth watching: he skipped both ceremonies where he won, radiating an energy that screams indifference toward the whole awards circuit. At 77¢ Yes shares, bettors are banking on history repeating itself. No shares at 24¢ exist for anyone who thinks the Academy punishes absentees, or that vote-splitting with del Toro opens a crack.
Stellan Skarsgård (Sentimental Value): 15% Chance
The early season favorite who lost altitude fast. Skarsgård won the Golden Globe for his performance as Gustav Borg, an aging filmmaker reconnecting with his estranged daughters in Joachim Trier's Norwegian drama, and made history as the first Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominee from an international film. That Globe win looked like a springboard until SAG left him off the nomination ballot entirely, a red flag that tanked his chances overnight. The 74-year-old has built a career of iconic supporting turns across Pirates of the Caribbean, Dune, and the MCU, but Sentimental Value asked him to do something different: hold the screen in silence, conveying decades of regret through expression alone. Some pundits argue the Penn/del Toro vote split from One Battle After Another could hand Skarsgård a path back. At 15¢ Yes shares, that's the bet. No shares at 86¢ say the SAG snub was a death sentence.
Delroy Lindo (Sinners): 8% Chance
The dark horse with a real pulse. Lindo, 73, earned his first Oscar nomination for playing Delta Slim, a blues musician recruited to perform at a Mississippi juke joint in Ryan Coogler's vampire drama, and he did it without a single major precursor nomination. No Golden Globe nod. No SAG. No Critics Choice. No BAFTA. Only one actor in modern history, Marcia Gay Harden for Pollock in 2000, has pulled off an acting Oscar win after missing every major precursor. The difference here is that Sinners holds the all-time nominations record with 16, and the film has been surging heading into tonight. Lindo's performance balances comedic timing with the thematic weight of cultural preservation across generations, and the Sinners wave could carry him further than markets expect. At 8¢ Yes shares, this is the highest-upside play in the category for anyone who thinks the film's historic run translates to gold.
Benicio del Toro (One Battle After Another): 2% Chance
The co-star caught in the crossfire. Del Toro plays Sergio St. Carlos, a martial arts sensei running an underground railroad for undocumented immigrants in Anderson's film, and critics circles actually gave him more individual wins than Penn or Skarsgård during the season. He already has a Best Supporting Actor Oscar from Traffic in 2000, making this his third nomination in the category. The problem is sharing a ballot with Penn from the same movie. Vote-splitting is exactly what could theoretically help Skarsgård or Lindo, but it almost certainly dooms del Toro's own chances. The market priced in that reality at 2¢ Yes shares.
Jacob Elordi (Frankenstein): 2% Chance
The young gun with a single trophy. Elordi stepped into the role of Frankenstein's Creature after Andrew Garfield dropped out, giving him limited prep time for a performance built almost entirely on physical expression and minimal dialogue. He picked up the Critics Choice Award for it, which is nothing to dismiss. The CCA has been a poor predictor for this category in recent years, though, and at 25 years old Elordi reads more like a future Oscar winner than a tonight Oscar winner. Yes shares at 2¢ are a name recognition play, not a serious shot at the statue.
The ceremony airs at 7pm ET on ABC with Conan O'Brien hosting, and Best Supporting Actor is one of the few envelopes where pundits aren't fully aligned. Penn's BAFTA-SAG double makes him the clear favorite, but the precursor trail has been messy enough to keep Skarsgård and Lindo in the conversation. Lock in your picks before the show starts.
Bet on Best Supporting Actor with Kalshi Here
More of oddschecker
