Toronto International Film Festival People's Choice Award

Overview

The People's Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival is an audience-voted prize presented to the highest-rated film by TIFF attendees. The award is the most reliable festival predictor of the Academy Award for Best Picture: 22 of its past winners have received Best Picture Oscar nominations, and 7 have won. The 2025 winner was Hamnet, directed by Chloé Zhao, making her the first director to win the award twice (she previously won for Nomadland in 2020).

TIFF takes place in September, positioning the award at the start of the fall awards season. Studios and distributors specifically target TIFF for world premieres of their awards contenders, knowing that a strong audience response generates the first wave of Oscar buzz. The 50th edition of TIFF in 2025 welcomed over 700,000 guests, nearly 2,000 accredited media, 6,000 industry delegates, and 1,200 screenings across 110 red carpets.

The People's Choice Awards are presented by Rogers. The full list of TIFF 2025 award winners is published on the TIFF website.

How It Works

TIFF screens over 200 films across multiple programs including Galas, Special Presentations, Platform, Discovery, Wavelengths, and Midnight Madness. Audience members submit ratings for every film they attend via a scoring system, and the cumulative results determine the People's Choice Award winner along with first and second runners-up. All feature films and Primetime series in TIFF's Official Selection are eligible.

Beginning with the 50th edition in 2025, TIFF introduced a new International People's Choice Award for films from outside North America, while reserving the original People's Choice Award for films from Canada and the United States. This change separates domestic and international audience favorites, giving both categories clearer commercial signaling power.

Key Prizes

• People's Choice Award (presented by Rogers) - the top audience prize for films from Canada and the United States
• People's Choice Award - First Runner-Up
• People's Choice Award - Second Runner-Up
• International People's Choice Award (new in 2025) - for films from outside North America
• People's Choice Documentary Award (presented by Rogers) - for documentary features
• People's Choice Midnight Madness Award (presented by Rogers) - for the Midnight Madness program
• Platform Prize - jury-selected from a curated competition section

Oscar Predictor Track Record

The People's Choice Award has earned its reputation as an Oscar bellwether through a near-unbroken string of Best Picture contenders since 2008. Slumdog Millionaire (2008) was initially slated for a straight-to-DVD release before its TIFF audience response convinced its studio otherwise. It went on to win 8 Oscars, including Best Picture.

People's Choice Award winners that went on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture:

Additional winners that received Best Picture nominations include The Big Chill (1983), Places in the Heart (1984), Shine (1996), Life Is Beautiful (1998), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Precious (2009), Silver Linings Playbook (2012), The Imitation Game (2014), Room (2015), La La Land (2016), Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), JoJo Rabbit (2019), Belfast (2021), The Fabelmans (2022), and American Fiction (2023).

Recent Results

2025 (50th TIFF):

• People's Choice Award: Hamnet, dir. Chloé Zhao
• First Runner-Up: Frankenstein, dir. Guillermo del Toro
• Second Runner-Up: Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, dir. Rian Johnson
• International People's Choice Award: No Other Choice, dir. Park Chan-wook
• People's Choice Documentary Award: The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue, dir. Barry Avrich
• People's Choice Midnight Madness Award: Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, dir. Matt Johnson

2024 (49th TIFF):

• People's Choice Award: The Life of Chuck, dir. Mike Flanagan
• First Runner-Up: Emilia Pérez, dir. Jacques Audiard
• Second Runner-Up: Anora, dir. Sean Baker
• People's Choice Documentary Award: The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal, dir. Mike Downie
• People's Choice Midnight Madness Award: The Substance, dir. Coralie Fargeat

History

The People's Choice Award has been presented since 1978, shortly after the festival was founded as the Festival of Festivals in 1976. Prior to 2000, only the overall winner was named. Starting in 2000, TIFF began announcing first and second runners-up as well. The award was originally sponsored by Cadillac and Grolsch before Rogers took over as presenter.

The prize gained its current predictive significance in the 2000s as TIFF became the premier fall festival for launching Oscar campaigns. The festival's programming breadth means the People's Choice Award captures audience response across genres, formats, and nationalities, producing results that reflect genuine audience enthusiasm rather than industry politics or critical consensus.

Four Canadian films have won the People's Choice Award: The Decline of the American Empire (1986), The Hanging Garden (1997), Eastern Promises (2007), and Room (2015).

Significance for Filmmakers

For filmmakers premiering at TIFF, the People's Choice Award is the most commercially valuable prize the festival offers. A win generates immediate media coverage, strengthens distribution negotiations, and positions the film as an Oscar frontrunner at the earliest possible moment in the season. The 2024 winner The Life of Chuck was seeking distribution at the time of its win, and the award accelerated a distribution deal.

Even without winning, a strong audience response at TIFF provides data for distributors planning release strategies. Films that score well with TIFF audiences tend to perform well with general audiences, making the festival a testing ground for commercial potential. First and second runners-up also benefit: Emilia Pérez (2024 first runner-up) and Anora (2024 second runner-up, which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes) both went on to receive significant awards season attention.

Watch

Eligibility Quirks That Trip People Up

• Audience voting only, no jury: The People's Choice Award is determined entirely by audience ratings, not by a jury. Every TIFF attendee can rate every film they see via a scoring system. This makes the award a pure measure of audience enthusiasm rather than critical or industry consensus.
• All feature films in Official Selection are eligible: Unlike competitive festivals with curated competition sections, every feature film and Primetime series in TIFF's Official Selection is eligible for the People's Choice Award. This includes films from Galas, Special Presentations, Platform, Discovery, Wavelengths, and Midnight Madness.
• New International People's Choice Award (2025): Beginning with the 50th edition in 2025, TIFF introduced a separate International People's Choice Award for films from outside North America. The original People's Choice Award is now reserved for films from Canada and the United States. Filmmakers do not choose which category they compete in; eligibility is determined by the film's country of origin.
• Runners-up matter: TIFF announces first and second runners-up alongside the winner. These placements carry significant awards season value, as demonstrated by Emilia Pérez (2024 first runner-up) and Anora (2024 second runner-up), both of which went on to major Oscar campaigns.
• No submission fee for the award itself: Films do not submit specifically for the People's Choice Award. Eligibility is automatic for any film selected for TIFF's Official Selection, but the film must be programmed by TIFF first, which requires a separate festival submission process.

Prestige Tier

The TIFF People's Choice Award is the most reliable festival predictor of the Academy Award for Best Picture: 22 of its past winners have received Best Picture Oscar nominations, and 7 have won. Among festival audience awards, the TIFF People's Choice ranks first globally in Oscar predictive power, ahead of the Sundance Audience Award and the Venice Audience Award. The September timing gives the winner a head start on the entire awards season, making it the earliest major Oscar precursor. In terms of overall festival prestige, the People's Choice Award sits below the Palme d'Or and Golden Lion in auteur credibility but above them in commercial Oscar forecasting value. A win generates immediate media coverage and strengthens distribution negotiations at the earliest possible moment in the season.

See Also

For strategies on leveraging festival premieres for distribution, see Festival Strategy for Independent Films. To model how festival success translates into revenue, use the Revenue Forecast Calculator. For evaluating the cost of an awards-season campaign against projected returns, use the Ad Spend Break-Even Calculator.