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La Bola Negra Wins TIFF People's Choice Award
Confirmed
In Short: The sweeping epic 'La Bola Negra,' directed by Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, has won the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival’s People’s Choice Award, a prestigious honor voted on by audience members.
The film, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival this summer and won the Best Director award for Los Javis, spans 85 years from the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s to 2017, detailing a triptych of stories surrounding closeted gay soldiers, the lost final work of Federico García Lorca, and a modern-day search for gay and trans history.
La Bola Negra will be released in theaters for an extended engagement by Netflix on October 16 and will stream on the platform in December.
TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey said the film was “something we have never seen before” and urged the audience at the TIFF Lightbox ceremony to experience it.
The People’s Choice Award has long been one of TIFF’s most closely watched honors, with 13 of the last 16 winners going on to receive Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, and four of them actually winning the award.
This year, the Platform Award that TIFF gives is instantly eligible for the Oscar International Film Award, no need for the film to be submitted by its home country—one of only six film festivals that offer this opportunity.
In addition to La Bola Negra, Barry Avrich’s Darlene Love: I Know Where I’ve Been won the People’s Choice Documentary Award, adding another high-profile honor to a festival selection centered on one of music’s most extraordinary voices.
Nearly 7,000 delegates participated in TIFF: The Market, while 2,000 accredited members of the media covered the festival.
The People’s Choice Award from the just-wrapped 51st Toronto Film Festival has gone to Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s La Bola Negra, with first runner-up going to I Play Rocky and second runner-up Being Heumann.
The win caps a rousing week for La Bola Negra after it was selected as Spain’s official Oscar submission.
Background
La bola negra, also known as The Black Ball, is a 2026 drama film directed by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, from a screenplay they co-wrote with Alberto Conejero.
What's confirmed
- The four audience-voted awards include the People’s Choice Award, the People’s Choice Documentary Award, the People’s Choice Midnight Madness Award, and the International People’s Choice Award.
- Thirteen of the last 16 People’s Choice Award winners at TIFF went on to receive Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, and four of them ( The King’s Speech, 12 Years a Slave, Green Book, and Nomadland ) actually won the award.
- Last year, Hamnet was the TIFF People’s Choice winner, earning filmmaker Chloé Zhao the distinction of becoming the first director to win the award twice ( Nomadland won in 2020).
- Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s La Bola Negra claimed the festival’s top audience honor, the People’s Choice Award presented by Rogers.
What's still developing
- TIFF announced 12 awards during a live press conference at TIFF Lightbox, with honors spanning the audience-voted People’s Choice Awards, the juried Platform competition, Canadian features, international and Canadian short films, animation, and prizes presented by FIPRESCI and the Network for the Promotion of Asian Pacific Cinema.
- In the festival’s other audience-voted categories, Simon Stone’s Elsinore received the International People’s Choice Award.
- TIFF presented 294 films representing 72 countries, welcomed more than 800 members of the film community across 98 red carpets, and hosted 279 directors from around the world.
- The documentary’s audience win signals just how powerfully her story resonated with TIFF viewers.
- Voted on by audience members since 1978 and often considered a harbinger for the Best Picture Oscar, the People’s Choice Award has been won by such eventual Best Picture Academy Award winners as Nomadland, Green Book, 12 Years a Slave, The King’s Speech, Slumdog Millionaire, American Beauty and Chariots of Fire.
- Here is a complete list of all TIFF award winners: Launched in 1978, the TIFF People’s Choice Award, presented by Rogers, celebrates the Festival’s top title as chosen by Toronto’s famously passionate and discerning public audience.
- Paolo Strippoli Launched in 2015 and inspired by Jia Zhang-ke’s groundbreaking film, TIFF’s Platform Prize honours filmmakers with strong directorial vision and distinctive storytelling.
- So, we shall see how the tradition of TIFF and Oscar hold up in this regard.
- That’s a wrap on 11 days of the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival, as the annual event came to a starry close with this morning’s awards ceremony.
- Real TIFF fans know: A win here is a big deal, especially in these early days of the 2026 – 2027 film awards season.
- All feature films and series in TIFF’s Official Selection are eligible for these awards, which are (as the name implies) chosen by the audience itself.
- Today’s ceremony also included the presentation of various juried awards, including the Platform Award, the Best Canadian Feature Film Award, the Best Canadian Discovery Award, the NETPAC Award, and the FIPRESCI Prize, along with three short film awards (Best International Short Film, Best Canadian Short Film, and Best Animated Short Film).