The presence of protest pins at the Academy Awards was smaller than at last month's Grammys. Still, those who wore them used Sunday’s red carpet to denounce the US-Israeli military campaigns, call for a real ceasefire in Gaza, and demand justice for Palestinians, while warning against the escalating attacks on Iran and their toll on innocent civilians.
"No to war and free Palestine," actor Javier Bardem said onstage before presenting the best international feature film award. The 57-year-old Spanish actor wore a patch reading "No a la Guerra" (No to War) alongside a badge supporting Palestine.
Speaking to reporters on the red carpet, Bardem drew a direct parallel between past and current US interventions and foreign attempts at regime change.
"I'm wearing a pin that I used in 2003 with the Iraq war," he said, "which was an illegal war. And we are here, 23 years after, with another illegal war [led] by Trump and Netanyahu, and creating a lot of damage and innocent people being killed and bombed."
He added that his second badge represents a "Palestine symbol of resistance." The pin depicts Handala, a character created in 1969 by Palestinian cartoonist Naji al-Ali.
Earlier in the awards season, Bardem spoke to Variety about his passion for the movement.
"Here I am today, denouncing the genocide in Gaza," Bardem said. "I am talking about the IAGS, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, who study thoroughly genocide and has declared it is a genocide. That’s why we ask for a commercial and diplomatic blockade and also sanctions on Israel to stop the genocide. Free Palestine."
In September 2025, he also used the Primetime Emmy Awards to spotlight the situation in Gaza. In February 2026, he joined more than 80 others in signing an open letter urging the Berlin International Film Festival to condemn Israel’s war on the strip.
Bardem wasn’t the only celebrity showing solidarity with Palestine at this year’s Oscars.
Many actors and creatives wore red pins featuring a white dove, the official emblem of "Artists4Ceasefire," as a visible statement of support.
The group, which includes more than 500 members, including Javier Bardem, Ben Affleck, Pedro Pascal, Florence Pugh, Jennifer Lopez, Andrew Garfield, and Bradley Cooper, has called for a permanent ceasefire in Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza, which has continued despite a ceasefire brokered by Cairo, Doha, Ankara, and Washington in October 2025.
Other celebrities, including Charithra Chandran and Sara Bareilles, also displayed the pins on the red carpet.
The cast of The Voice of Hind Rajab, which portrays the killing of a six-year-old Palestinian girl by Israeli forces in Gaza, wore the pins prominently as a gesture of solidarity. The film was nominated for Best International Feature Film but did not win the Oscar.
Saja Kilani, a Jordanian-Palestinian actress starring in the film, explained on the red carpet: "This pin is a collaboration with an artist Shepard Fairey, it’s 'Artists4Ceasefire' and we’re demanding a permanent ceasefire."
She added, first speaking of Gaza, "There is no ceasefire happening right now, there are bombings happening to this day, destruction, displacements all over the world in Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, Venezuela."
Israeli strikes have killed at least 673 Palestinians and wounded 1,799 others since the ceasefire went into effect, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, bringing the total death toll of Palestinians since the outbreak of Israel's war on the strip in October 2023 to 27,249.
"Our struggles are connected. So is our liberation. And we're so, so honored to be here tonight," Kilani told The Associated Press.
One of the film’s lead actors, Motaz Malhees, was unable to attend the ceremony due to a travel ban linked to his Palestinian citizenship.
"I am not allowed to enter the United States because of my Palestinian citizenship," Malhees said on Instagram, adding, "it hurts."
Iranian directors of the best documentary nominee, Cutting Through Rocks, also expressed solidarity with their country amid the war, rejecting the idea of "regime change" through foreign intervention.
"Change is possible from within, not the other way around. We here to stand by the rights of our people," said Sara Khaki, one of the film’s directors.
The US and Israel have killed over 1,444 Iranians, including the 168 schoolgirls killed in an attack on an elementary school in Minab, since they launched a war against Iran on 28 February.
As Hollywood's awards season concludes, organizers say artists have become more vocal. Maremoto Executive Director Jess Morales Rocketto called it a "return to form" for political engagement.
She pointed to remarks by Mark Ruffalo earlier in the season.
"As much as I love all this," he told Entertainment Tonight, "I find it difficult to pretend like this crazy stuff isn't happening."
"I think we tapped into something early on that this is a time to take stands and make clear where you are at this moment in history," Morales Rocketto said.
One Battle After Another director Paul Thomas Anderson said he wrote the film for his children as an apology for the "housekeeping mess we left in this world we’re handing off to them."
Host Conan O'Brien also alluded to wider crises.
"We pay tribute tonight not just to film, but to the ideals of global artistry, collaboration, patience, resilience — and that rarest of qualities today: optimism," he said.
In the documentary category, Mr. Nobody Against Putin, co-director David Borenstein delivered one of the evening’s most pointed speeches.
"[The film] is about how you lose your country," he said. "You lose it through countless small, little acts of complicity. When we act complicit, when a government murders people on the streets of our major cities, when we don’t say anything, we all make a moral choice. But luckily, even a nobody is more powerful than you think."
Elsewhere, advocacy group Free Press used a mobile billboard near the Dolby Theater to protest media consolidation linked to Paramount Skydance's likely takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery.
Morales Rocketto acknowledged that symbolic gestures alone will not drive systemic change, but said they still matter.
"This only happens if stars say yes, if stars decide to use their platform, if they decide that they want to make statements that go beyond, ‘What am I wearing,’. I don’t take that for granted. It’s a big move for people to say that."
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