That's it for another year, folks.
Thanks for sticking with us through the 2026 AACTA awards!
If that ceremony went too quickly for you and you'd like to relive it again for the memes, or if you're just catching up now and want the cliff notes version, here's everything you need to know.
Prime Video miniseries The Narrow Road to the Deep North won nine awards tonight, becoming the most-awarded TV show.
It follows Netflix's Boy Swallows Universe dominating the 2025 awards, with 12 wins.
It shows just how important the streamers are to our local screen industry.
Streaming services already account for $238 million (or 73 per cent) of investment in TV drama, according to Screen Australia's annual drama report.
Hopefully the recently announced quotas for streaming services, which mandate platforms commit at least 10 per cent of local expenditure or 7.5 per cent of revenue to Australian content, will lead to even more local stories being told on those platforms.
The Narrow Road to the Deep North has won the most TV awards at the AACTAs, with nine wins from 12 nominations.
It's the story of Dorrigo, played by Jacob Elordi, an army doctor deployed to the Pacific in World War II, who is enslaved to build the Thai-Burma Railway.
The narrative flips between Dorrigo and his fellow soldiers (among them Heartbreak High's Thomas Weatherall and Bump's Christian Byers) in Thailand during WWII; his affair with his uncle's much younger wife, Amy (Odessa Young; Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere), before the war; and his unhappy marriage and career in the late 80s.
Its director Justin Kurzel, making his first foray into TV, told ABC Radio National's The Screen Show he was drawn to the connection between Dorrigo and Amy.
"I was deeply moved by this idea of a phantom love story happening through the war, and how that relationship became a sanctuary for him next to all that trauma," he said.
"It was material I hadn't investigated before, but I was deeply moved by how that love story sustained itself throughout his life."
Read our full feature on the series here:
Well, we made it. We watched the AACTA Awards. The two big winners on the night? Horror flick Bring Her Back and war drama The Narrow Road to the Deep North.
Here's the full tally.
FILM
Bring Her Back — 10
The Correspondent — 3
Lesbian Space Princess — 2
Journey Home, David Gulpilil — 2
The Surfer — 1
Kangaroo — 1
Unbreakable - The Jelena Dokic Story — 1
Yurlu | Country — 1
Tron: Ares — 1
TELEVISION
The Narrow Road to the Deep North — 9
The Newsreader — 4
The People vs Robodebt — 2
Apple Cider Vinegar — 2
Hard Quiz — 2
Alone Australia — 1
The Great Australian Bake Off — 1
Mix Tape — 1
Top End Bub — 1
Play School: All Together — 1
Grand Designs Australia — 1
Celia Pacquola: I'm as Surprised as You Are — 1
The Kimberley — 1
That's how Celeste Barber signed off because, thank God, the AACTA Awards are officially over.
We did it. We got through it. We are so proud of you for getting through it too.
The icon took to the stage to announce the best film award and also delivered one of the funniest but also moving speeches of the night.
"We are on fire, Queensland is on fire, the country is on fire creatively," Luhrmann said. (Glad he clarified that he meant creatively, it's been a rough few weeks for bushfires.)
"We have government support, we have local government support.
"We have national government support — but more than that, a confidence in our ability to tell stories of such variety that anywhere in the world."
Danny and Michael Philippou's horror movie Bring Her Back has won the most movie awards at the AACTAs, with 10 wins from 16 nominations, including best film.
It stars British Oscar nominee Sally Hawkins (The Shape of Water) as a foster mother with a plan to bring her daughter back from the dead. It's just a shame it involves her unwitting foster children, Andy (Billy Barratt) and Piper (Sora Wong).
In her review, our friend and fellow blogger Velvet Winter praised its "skillfully executed gore".
"It is plentiful, extreme, sickeningly realistic ... but it never slips into being gratuitous," she wrote.
When we spoke to Danny last month, he told us he was super proud to be part of an international moment for Aussie horror, alongside his fellow nominee tonight, Together.
"This is a moment in time where we're on that international or global stage," he said.
"I love that it's going back to those amazing times in the 70s and 80s and kinda this Ozploitation era where we have our own unique fingerprint, and we're planting it all over the world.
"It has its own DNA, and it feels really homegrown. It feels really special."
Read more about the Philippou brothers in our interview from last year.
Peter Greste, the journalist Roxburgh played in The Correspondent, who was detained for 400 days in Egypt, accepted the best actor award on the actor's behalf.
He's in Sydney at the moment, rehearsing for Art, the play, which opens in a couple of weeks.
Greste said he was surprised by the casting of Roxburgh, whom he associated with his role as a barrister cad in Rake.
"But it turns out that he did it with incredible grace and humility and talent," he said.
Yael Stone plays producer Kate Peyton, who was murdered in Somalia in 2005, and whom Greste often thinks of in the movie.
"Since her death, there have been over a thousand journalists who have been killed on the job and many more imprisoned for doing their work," Greste said.
"That's the story that we really wanted to do."
Read our interview with Greste, Roxburgh and director Kriv Stenders below: