The Oscars to move out of the Dolby Theatre to the Peacock Theater

The 2026 award’s season was an overdrawn, arduous dash to the end line—and the shake-ups are apparently not even over. On March 26, the Academy of Movement Image Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) introduced a partnership with developer AEG to relocate the Oscars ceremony from its longtime residence at Dolby Theatre to the Peacock Theater in Downtown LA. The transfer is slated for 2029, which marks the top of the Oscars two-decade residency on the The Dolby Theatre, making the one centesimal Oscars in 2028 its final within the landmark corridor. 

In a press launch from AEG and the AMPAS, a plan was outlined for the ceremony to happen within the Peacock Theatre by way of 2039. The Peacock Theater was designed by Berkley,California-based agency ELS Structure and City Design in 2007, initially named the Nokia Theatre. 

“We’re thrilled to companion with a worldwide powerhouse like AEG. Their observe file for constructing and working technologically refined reside efficiency venues is unequalled,” academy CEO Invoice Kramer and academy President Lynette Howell Taylor stated. 

AEG is the developer accountable for L.A. Reside, the 23-acre leisure hub that homes the Peacock Theater. In comparison with the Dolby Theatre’s 3,400 seating capability, the venue change provides a further 3,800 seats. Complete upgrades and changes to the theater’s sound and lighting are slated to happen. 

AEG’s purview will lengthen to foyer and backstage changes in addition to collaborating with the Academy to include bespoke parts to accommodate the Oscars ceremony. L.A. Reside’s huge concrete pavilion will make method for purple carpet arrivals and actions, simply in time for the printed to shift from ABC to Youtube, one other change deliberate for a similar 12 months. 

The Peacock Theater has been no stranger to internet hosting primetime broadcast occasions. The venue has held  the Emmys Ceremony since 2008 and hosted the 2025 gaming awards most lately. 

Designing Dolby

When American architect David Rockwell was commissioned to design the Dolby Theatre, it was constructed with the ceremony in thoughts. The event price $94 million, and included infrastructure for 14 mounted digicam positions with optimum electrical energy output all through the house. Even seating association was thought of, with nominees not more than 4 seats away from an aisle. 

Its facade takes cues from artwork deco theaters from the Nineteen Twenties in a nostalgic trendy interpretation, with the well-known TCL Chinese language Theatre simply across the nook. A colonnade trails between its entrance entrance to the grand staircase, whose columns adorn a sequence of plaques naming every greatest image winner since 1927 with room to proceed till 2071. What is going to occur to this after the transfer?

The Dolby Theatre has been a fixture on Hollywood Boulevard since its opening in 2002 (then referred to as the Kodak Theatre earlier than the digicam firm’s chapter in 2012), which marked an upward shift within the district. When property builders TrizecHahn tapped the AMPAS in 1997 it was throughout a interval when the Oscars ceremony moved from venue to venue throughout Los Angeles. Hollywood Boulevard was a lot much less recognized for its glitz and glam however relatively for vacationer traps and ubiquitous storefront emptiness. Not not like how Disney rescued Instances Sq. within the 90’s, the Oscars assist carry again prosperity again to the guts of Hollywood. 

Los Angeles at massive can also be present process plenty of civic initiatives to reinforce and urbanize its downtown, forward of the 2028 Summer time Olympics and with group efforts as its residential inhabitants expands.