In 1990, he was elected Corresponding Member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and in 2003 a Full Member (Academician) of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Oganessian has honorary degrees from Goethe University Frankfurt (2002), University of Messina (2009), and Yerevan State University (2022). In 2019, he was elected as an Honorary Fellow of St Catharine's College, Cambridge.