Every awards season, the same question comes round: do voters actually watch the films? 

That suspicion increased after the reported Oscars scandal where it emerged that many Academy members hadn’t actually seen most of the films they were voting on – I mean, The Brutalist and Dune Part 2 were soooo long, right? Everyone assumed the same must be true of Bafta. 

As a Metro film critic and a Bafta voting member, I’m here to tell you how it all actually happens – from the inside.

First, a confession: no one watches every eligible film. This year, 221 films were officially submitted for Bafta consideration. I only watched 112 of them. And I watch films for a living. This Sunday, when I attend the Baftas ceremony at the Royal Festival Hall hosted by Alan Cumming and surrounded by stars like Timothee Chalamet and Jessie Buckley alongside a multitude of talented filmmakers, I doubt a single person has watched every entry submitted. No one watches all 221 – that’s honestly not the point.

Yet what Bafta does require is considerably more rigorous than you might expect.

What happens during the Bafta voting process?

This week, when I submitted my final vote, it took a good half an hour. I had to individually verify how many of the 43 finalists I’d seen, else I would be locked out of some of the 23 categories. And that was just the tip of the Bafta-berg. The reality is that the Bafta Film Awards voting process requires many, many hours of dedication across many months.

Here’s something almost no one outside the membership knows. In early November, before you cast a single vote, Bafta assigns you a randomised group of 15 films to watch. This is specifically designed to level the playing field – so that big-budget films with multi-million-pound awards campaigns don’t dominate. Every voter, regardless of their connections in the industry, is required to engage with those 15 titles.

From then voting consists of three distinct rounds: longlisting, nominations, and winners. Each round has its own rules, its own eligible films, and in some cases, its own specialist voters.

The some 8,300 members of Bafta’s global voting membership don’t vote on everything. Specialist groups – known as Chapters – handle certain categories based on professional expertise.

For example, if you are a director or an editor, you can opt in to vote as part of that Chapter. In most categories, the final round is decided by the wider film-voting membership — though a few awards, like outstanding debut and children’s & family film, are jury-decided all the way through.

The one rule that rules them all is: if you haven’t seen a film, you can’t vote on it.

Who actually checks that you have actually seen the films?

Every qualifying film is made available on Bafta View, the organisation’s secure, private online streaming platform, which means you can watch from anywhere in the world, at any time – though there are also industry screenings you can attend in person if you are based in London.

Bafta can see whether you’ve pressed play on the Bafta View portal, but they can’t crawl into your living room and physically verify you watched every minute with your eyes open. And they can’t tell which films you’ve watched on other platforms or in person. So there is still an element of trust involved. Which, in my experience, is one taken seriously, given the voting body is made up of professional filmmakers and craftspeople.

And, to be fair, compared to the Oscars, Bafta has been tightening this stuff for a while. After its 2020 review, Bafta introduced required ‘conscious voter’ training for all voting members.

The American Academy’s equivalent move is newer: a category-by-category viewing requirement was approved in 2025 and takes effect for the 98th Oscars this March meaning the online ballot unlocks on a category-by-category basis once members’ viewing is verified.

Is the system perfect? Nothing is. Can people still cheat and click they’ve seen a film when they haven’t? Honest answer: yes, but it’s an effort and it involves multiple checks.

This year, on each Baftas voting round I had to individually verify each film I’d watched. Of the 43 nominees on my final ballot I’d only actually seen 35, which meant I had to abstain from certain categories. And that’s how it should be. Not telling you which ones I’d missed, but if you feel anyone was robbed on Sunday night, you can bring your beef to me.

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