Kendrick Lamar tops the 68th Annual Grammy nominations with nine nods, leading a field that includes Lady Gaga with seven and Bad Bunny among the major contenders, per the Recording Academy's announcement on November 7, 2025. Recordings released between August 31, 2024 and August 31, 2025 were eligible, and final-round voting closed in early January ahead of the February 1, 2026 telecast.
This piece covers who is nominated, what changed in the process, and what it signals for the awards cycle.
Who leads the 2026 Grammy field?
Lamar's nine nominations flow largely from his 2024 album GNX and its chart-dominating singles, including record-of-the-year nominee "Luther" with SZA. Lady Gaga's seven nods center on Mayhem, her seventh studio album. Bad Bunny, riding a nomination-heavy year that also put him on the Super Bowl LX halftime stage, ranks among the leaders. Billie Eilish's "Wildflower" landed in the song-of-the-year conversation, Doechii's "Anxiety" picked up a nod, and songwriter Amy Allen continued her run of recognition.
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What changed in the process this year?
The headline structural shift came before the nominees were even read. On November 4, 2025, the Recording Academy announced that Latin Grammy voters were invited into the Grammy voting membership for the first time in the awards' history, per the Academy. That move expands an already internationalized voter base and acknowledges how much of the past several eligibility windows' commercial and critical weight has come from Spanish-language repertoire.
Why the January window matters
Between the November reveal and the February ceremony, the industry's attention moves from hype to arithmetic: finalists jockey in the craft categories, labels press their FYC campaigns, and the streaming numbers behind each contender get re-litigated. Lamar entering the telecast with the largest nomination count mirrors his 2025 sweep, when he took five awards on the way to the biggest night of his career, which makes his 2026 position less a breakout than a continuation.
What happens next
The 68th Annual Grammy Awards telecast takes place February 1, 2026, with winners revealed across the four general fields and the full slate of categories. Whatever the results, the voting-membership expansion means the electorate behind those results is measurably different from any previous Grammy class — and the 2027 cycle will be the first built entirely on that new foundation.
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