Kansas City Film Critics Circle Award for Best Director

Winners
Names and titles in bold indicate directors that won the Academy Award for Best Director. Names and titles with an asterisk (*) indicate films that were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director, but did not win.
 * 1966 - Federico Fellini, Juliet of the Spirits
 * 1967 - Michelangelo Antonioni*, Blowup
 * 1968 - Stanley Kubrick*, 2001: A Space Odyssey
 * 1969 - John Schlesinger, Midnight Cowboy
 * 1970 - Robert Altman*, M*A*S*H
 * 1971 - Sam Peckinpah, Straw Dogs
 * 1972 - Francis Ford Coppola*, The Godfather
 * 1973 - Ingmar Bergman*, Cries & Whispers
 * 1974 - Francis Ford Coppola, The Godfather Part II / The Conversation
 * 1975 - Robert Altman*, Nashville
 * 1976 - Milos Forman, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
 * 1977 - Woody Allen, Annie Hall
 * 1978 - Woody Allen*, Interiors
 * 1979 - Robert Benton, Kramer vs. Kramer
 * 1980 - Robert Redford, Ordinary People
 * 1981 - Sidney Lumet, Prince of the City
 * 1982 - Steven Spielberg*, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
 * 1983 - Philip Kaufman, The Right Stuff
 * 1984 - David Lean*, A Passage to India
 * 1985 - Steven Spielberg, The Color Purple
 * 1986 - Oliver Stone, Platoon / Salvador
 * 1987 - Steven Spielberg, Empire of the Sun
 * 1988 - Barry Levinson, Rain Man
 * 1989 - Edward Zwick, Glory
 * 1990 - Martin Scorsese*, Goodfellas
 * 1991 - Jonathan Demme, The Silence of the Lambs
 * 1992 - Clint Eastwood, Unforgiven
 * 1993 - Steven Spielberg, Schindler's List
 * 1994 - Quentin Tarantino*, Pulp Fiction
 * 1995 - Ron Howard*, Apollo 13
 * 1996 - Joel Coen*, Fargo
 * 1997 - James Cameron, Titanic
 * 1998 - Steven Spielberg, Saving Private Ryan
 * 1999 - Sam Mendes, American Beauty
 * 2000 - Steven Soderbergh, Traffic
 * 2001 - Peter Jackson*, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
 * 2002 - Peter Jackson*, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
 * 2003 - Peter Jackson, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
 * 2004 - Martin Scorsese*, The Aviator
 * 2005 - Steven Spielberg*, Munich
 * 2006 - Paul Greengrass*, United 93
 * 2007 - Paul Thomas Anderson*, There Will Be Blood / Julian Schnabel*, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
 * 2008 - Darren Aronofsky, The Wrestler
 * 2009 - Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker
 * 2010 - Christopher Nolan, Inception
 * 2011 - Terrence Malick*, The Tree of Life
 * 2012 - Ang Lee, Life of Pi
 * 2013 - Alfonso Cuarón, Gravity / Steve McQueen*, 12 Years a Slave
 * 2014 - Richard Linklater*, Boyhood
 * 2015 - George Miller*, Mad Max: Fury Road
 * 2016 - Kenneth Lonergan*, Manchester by the Sea
 * 2017 - Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water
 * 2018 - Alfonso Cuarón, Roma

Most wins

 * 6 - Steven Spielberg
 * 3 - Peter Jackson
 * 2  - Woody Allen, Robert Altman, Francis Ford Coppola, Alfonso Cuarón, Martin Scorsese