A landmark deal to relocate Hollywood’s biggest night, the Oscars, to downtown Los Angeles could reshape one of the city’s most prominent entertainment districts.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and AEG have struck a long-term partnership that will move the movie award show to L.A. Live in downtown Los Angeles beginning in 2029, with ceremonies held at Peacock Theater through at least 2039.
“Hosting the Oscars at L.A. Live will further solidify downtown Los Angeles as a premier destination for global entertainment events,” said Dan Beckerman, chief executive of AEG.
The deal positions the 23-acre L.A. Live campus as the global stage for the Academy Awards show held each March, marking a major shift from its longtime home at Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, where the ceremony will remain through 2028.
The move underscores a broader push to modernize the Oscars experience — equal parts global spectacle, industry scoreboard and red-carpet event — as live events and media distribution evolve. The move coincides with the event heading to YouTube; the show will air on the streaming website starting in 2029.
AEG, a global owner, operator and developer of sports and entertainment venues that produces live events and manages facilities across North America, Europe and Asia, plans to upgrade Peacock Theater with improvements to stage, sound and lighting systems as well as backstage and lobby areas, while working with the Academy to tailor the venue for the production demands of the show.
Full circle relocation
L.A. Live is a 4 million-square-foot entertainment zone that's home to Crypto.com Arena and the expanding Los Angeles Convention Center alongside hotels and restaurants.
Before settling in Hollywood, the Oscars were a downtown Los Angeles fixture for nearly two decades, held at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the Los Angeles Music Center from 1969 to 1987, anchoring the ceremony in the city’s civic core before its long run at Hollywood venues including the Dolby Theatre.
The Peacock Theater at L.A. Live opened in 2007 as the Nokia Theatre. Then it was rebranded to be in sync with the NBC Universal-owned streaming service. The venue has evolved from a concert-focused anchor — hosting events like the Primetime Emmy Awards, the American Music Awards and major touring concerts — into a live-events stage as one of several venues downtown hosting 2028 Olympic Games events including weightlifting and later-stage boxing competitions.
The roughly 180,000-square-foot Dolby Theatre was purpose-built for the Oscars and has hosted the Academy Awards since 2002. The theater changed hands in 2024, when an LLC made up of a movie producer, a former studio head, an advertising entrepreneur, a restaurateur and a member of the United Arab Emirates royal family paid $50 million to take over the Los Angeles venue from the California Public Employees’ Retirement System.
The sale served as a reminder that even the Oscars’ longtime Hollywood home is part of a shifting real estate landscape.
Signs of a comeback
Downtown Los Angeles, meanwhile, has struggled to regain energy lost during the pandemic, when thousands of businesses closed and residents moved to outlying areas, exacerbating concerns about safety and a large homeless population in the area.
The Oscars’ move comes as the area is seeing a fresh wave of investment and repositioning, particularly around L.A. Live, where hospitality, residential and entertainment properties are being upgraded ahead of global events like the World Cup and the Olympics.
At the same time, new ownership at the long-stalled Oceanwide Plaza — widely known as the “graffiti towers” — is fueling expectations that one of downtown’s most visible distressed projects could finally move toward completion, adding momentum to the area’s recovery.
Meanwhile, the entertainment industry is in flux, forcing Los Angeles players to adapt as merging megastudios shrink their footprints, new stage campuses come online and producers chase incentives and lower costs in places like Georgia, New Mexico and overseas.