When and where are the 2026 Grammys taking place?
The 2026 Grammy Awards will be held on Sunday 1 February at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, the venue that has long been home to the ceremony and that many still remember as the Staples Center. This will be the 68th edition of the Recording Academy’s awards and it arrives at a particularly intense moment for the industry, following a year shaped by major releases from artists such as Lady Gaga, Bad Bunny, Kendrick Lamar and Sabrina Carpenter. For that reason, this ceremony will help define which sounds, names and trends will shape the musical story of 2026.
Who leads the nominations?
The most nominated artist at the 2026 Grammys is Kendrick Lamar, with nine nominations, putting him clearly ahead of the rest. He is followed by Lady Gaga, Sabrina Carpenter and Jack Antonoff, with seven each, while Bad Bunny and Leon Thomas have six apiece. The nominees in the major categories — Album of the Year, Song of the Year and Best New Artist — complete the picture of what 2026’s musical landscape looks like.
As always, there have also been some eyebrow-raising omissions. Highly talked-about albums such as Virgin by Lorde and The Secret of Us by Gracie Abrams have been left out of the top categories, a reminder that at the Grammys it is not enough to be everywhere — you also have to fit the Academy’s sometimes unpredictable logic.
Who are the big favourites this year?
According to the tracking of specialist media such as Los40, the name most frequently mentioned for Album of the Year is Bad Bunny with Debí Tirar Más Fotos, a record that has not only topped the charts but has also been hailed as one of the most complete and ambitious projects of his career. It is one of those albums that plays everywhere while still winning over critics. His main rival is Kendrick Lamar with GNX, the project that has put him back at the centre of US rap and which also arrives as the most nominated album of this edition.
For Record of the Year, the frontrunner is “Luther”, the collaboration between Kendrick Lamar and SZA, while for Song of the Year the favourite is “Golden” by HUNTR/X (KPop Demon Hunters), one of last year’s biggest cultural surprises according to Los40. For Best New Artist, the name that draws the strongest consensus is Olivia Dean, one of the season’s most celebrated emerging talents.
Who will perform and what can we expect from the show?
The 2026 Grammys are shaping up to feel like a proper festival of styles and generations. Artists already confirmed to take the stage in Los Angeles include Sabrina Carpenter, Pharrell Williams and Clipse, alongside a strong wave of emerging talent such as Addison Rae, KATSEYE, Leon Thomas, Lola Young, Olivia Dean, SOMBR, Alex Warren and The Marías — all of them part of the Best New Artist category and ready to make their mark.
The announcement that has caused the most excitement is Justin Bieber’s return to the Grammys after several years without a major televised performance, an appearance many fans have been eagerly waiting for and one that comes at a key moment in his career, with several nominations this year.
It has also been confirmed that Harry Styles and Doechii will take part as guest presenters during the ceremony, reinforcing the sense that this edition successfully mixes established stars with a new generation coming through.
Meanwhile, the main host of the evening will once again be Trevor Noah, for the sixth and final time. The Academy has confirmed that this will be his last year presenting the show, giving the night a sense of a chapter coming to an end and reinforcing the idea that the 2026 Grammys are not only celebrating a year of music, but also closing a cycle.
Where can you watch the ceremony from home?
In Spain, the 2026 Grammys will be broadcast live in the early hours of Monday 2 February via Movistar+, which holds the official streaming rights. The main ceremony begins at 2:00 a.m. (Spanish mainland time), in line with the live broadcast on US network CBS.
Before the main show, the Premiere Ceremony takes place, where many technical and genre-specific awards are handed out. This earlier part can be followed via the official Grammy channels and usually starts several hours before the televised gala.
Why isn’t Rosalía’s LUX competing at these Grammys?
Although many expected LUX to be a natural contender at the 2026 Grammys, Rosalía’s album has been left out for a much simpler reason than it might seem: the calendar. The Recording Academy only considers works released between 31 August 2024 and 30 August 2025, and LUX came out after that deadline.
It is not a question of quality or impact — the album was one of the most talked-about releases of the end of the year — but simply how the rules work. The Grammys do not measure “the best of the last twelve months”, only what falls within their official eligibility window. Rosalía will therefore have to wait for the next edition, which, given the noise around LUX, feels more like a delay than a defeat.
Why do these Grammys matter more than usual?
Because this year it is not just big stars competing, but different ways of understanding music and pop culture. Bad Bunny represents the global expansion of Spanish-language pop into the mainstream, Kendrick Lamar stands for the artistic and social weight of rap, and Lady Gaga embodies the ability of a superstar to reinvent herself without losing relevance. Alongside them are new names like Olivia Dean, Addison Rae and The Marías, showing where the next wave is coming from. Having all these generations and styles collide in one edition says a lot about how the industry has changed and who is setting the pace right now.
We may not all agree with the winners — we never do — but this Sunday the Grammys will once again do something that still matters: they will decide, for better or worse, which artists and which sounds become part of the official musical story of 2026.
Trueno returns to Spain in 2026 with dates in Madrid and Barcelona.
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