The 68th Annual Grammy Awards are finally here, turning Los Angeles into the center of the music universe on Sunday, February 1, 2026. The 2026 Grammy Awards will air live from Crypto.com Arena at 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT on CBS and stream live on Paramount+ with Showtime, with Paramount+ Essential subscribers able to watch the full telecast the following day on demand.
Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. and executive producer Ben Winston are promising a night that feels genuinely unpredictable. As Mason recently put it, fans should expect “18 or 19” performances, while columnist H. Alan Scott says this is one of those rare years when “literally nobody knows what’s going to go down.” Together with co-executive producers Raj Kapoor and Jesse Collins, Winston is trying to make sure the 2026 Grammys feel less like an awards slog and more like a three-hour playlist that never stops.
That sense of urgency comes after a dramatic 2025 show, when the Palisades and Eaton wildfires forced the Grammys to retool the 67th ceremony in a matter of weeks. The telecast pivoted into a MusiCares fundraiser built around L.A. pride, complete with Dawes drummer Griffin Goldsmith performing after losing his home in Altadena, a rousing rendition of Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.,” and appearances from Sheryl Crow and John Legend. The fundraiser ultimately brought in more than $9 million, and Winston remembers that scramble as proof that his team can build a full-scale Grammy production at speed.
When are the Grammys 2026 and how to watch
For anyone still Googling “when are the Grammys 2026,” the basics are straightforward. The 2026 Grammy Awards take place on Sunday, February 1, 2026, at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. The main ceremony begins at 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT and will be broadcast on CBS as part of the long-running partnership between the network and the Recording Academy.
The 2026 Grammy Awards will also be available to stream live on Paramount+ with Showtime. Viewers who use live TV services like YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV, Fubo, and DirecTV Stream will be able to tune into CBS that night, while Paramount+ Essential subscribers will gain on-demand access to the full show on Monday, February 2. Red carpet coverage starts earlier in the evening on E! News, ET Live, and ETonline.com, with additional streams available on platforms such as Roku, Amazon Fire, Pluto TV, Samsung TV Plus, and The Roku Channel.
Before the primetime telecast, the Grammys 2026 Premiere Ceremony begins at 3:30 p.m. ET. That pre-show streams on live.GRAMMY.com and the Recording Academy’s official YouTube channel, with Darren Criss hosting and performing alongside a genre-hopping lineup including Helen J. Shen, Zara Larsson, Spiritbox, Tasha Cobbs Leonard, Grace Potter, Israel Houghton, Lila Iké, Maggie Rose, and Trombone Shorty. Many of the night’s first trophies will be handed out long before CBS goes live.
Trevor Noah’s final turn as Grammys host
Grammys 2026 also marks the end of an era. Trevor Noah has hosted the Grammys every year since 2021, guiding the show through pandemic improvisations, hybrid telecasts, and the return to a full arena audience. He has already said that the 2026 show will be his last as host, closing out what Winston calls a “generational run” on the mic.
Winston recalls that after last year’s telecast, Noah tried to bow out gracefully. “I’ve done a great five years, it’s time to hand the microphone off,” the former Daily Show anchor told him. Winston’s response was simple: “Come back and do one final year.” The pitch worked, and Noah signed on to lead what will also be the Grammys’ final broadcast on CBS.
Mason describes Noah as “super funny but respectful — and not cringey funny, which is important for our show,” and Winston loves that the host can roll with live-TV chaos. When Winston is in his ear, asking him to stretch while a Sabrina Carpenter set is still being built behind the scenes, Noah can fill “another minute and a half” without viewers ever realizing anything is amiss.
Grammys 2026 performers, presenters, and tributes
If “Grammy Awards 2026” makes you think first about the music, you are not wrong. With “18 or 19” performances packed into a single broadcast, the lineup leans heavily on cross-generational pairings, blockbuster stars, and a wave of first-time nominees.
- Telecast headliners: The main show features Lady Gaga, Kendrick Lamar, Bad Bunny, Kacey Musgraves, Megan Thee Stallion, Justin Bieber, Pharrell Williams, Sabrina Carpenter, Leon Thomas, Alex Warren, Clipse, Doechii, SZA, Tyler, the Creator, Brandy Clark, and Lukas Nelson, among others.
- Best new artist spotlight: All eight best new artist contenders will appear in a single, extended segment that Winston likens to listening to a playlist rather than flipping channels. That sequence includes Addison Rae, Alex Warren, Katseye, Leon Thomas, Lola Young, Olivia Dean, Sombr, and The Marías.
- In Memoriam segment: The emotional centerpiece of the night will see Reba McEntire, Ms. Lauryn Hill, Post Malone, Brandy Clark, Lukas Nelson, Andrew Watt, Chad Smith, Duff McKagan, and Slash honoring artists lost over the past year.
- Premiere Ceremony performers: Darren Criss, Helen J. Shen, Zara Larsson, Spiritbox, Tasha Cobbs Leonard, Grace Potter, Israel Houghton, Lila Iké, Maggie Rose, and Trombone Shorty lead the performances during the afternoon pre-show.
- Presenters and more: A delightfully odd mix of presenters includes Chappell Roan, Queen Latifah, Carole King, Teyana Taylor, Jeff Goldblum, and Q-Tip, with more celebrities expected to stroll the stage and the aisles.
Analysis: In terms of sheer volume, this is one of the most performance-heavy Grammy shows in recent memory. Packing so many performances, debuts, and tributes into a three-hour window could make the 2026 Grammys feel breathless. It also raises the stakes for the production team, who have to flip from a Tyler, the Creator set to a country medley, then into a somber In Memoriam segment, without losing momentum.
Grammy nominations 2026: Kendrick, Gaga, Bad Bunny, and Rosé lead the pack
On the nominations side, Kendrick Lamar is the artist to beat with nine nominations, including album of the year, record of the year, and song of the year. If Lamar wins album of the year, he would become only the third rap artist ever to take that prize, joining Lauryn Hill, who won in 1999, and Outkast, who won in 2004.
Lady Gaga enters the night as the second most-nominated artist of the Grammys 2026 with seven nominations. Rising pop star Sabrina Carpenter, multi-hyphenate Leon Thomas, and global powerhouse Bad Bunny each scored six nominations, underlining how broad the Recording Academy’s definition of “mainstream” has become for the 68th Grammys.
Bad Bunny’s Spanish-language LP Debí Tirar Más Fotos is in the hunt for album of the year after already winning that top prize at the Latin Grammys in Las Vegas. A win on Sunday would mark the first time a Spanish-language album has taken album of the year at the main Grammys, and the academy’s recent invitation to members of the Latin Recording Academy to join its ranks may make that outcome more likely.
K-pop is chasing history too. Rosé’s “Apt.” is the first song by a K-pop act ever nominated for record of the year, and the people behind the KPop Demon Hunters track “Golden” are also in the mix. Despite K-pop’s dominance on streaming platforms and social media, no K-pop artist has ever won a Grammy, so any win on Sunday would mark a major breakthrough.
New country categories and the Morgan Wallen no-show
One of the biggest structural changes for the Grammys 2026 comes in the country field. In response to a request from its Nashville contingent, the Recording Academy has split the former country album category into two: best traditional country album and best contemporary country album. Beyoncé carried the country album prize last year with Cowboy Carter, and the timing of the change has fueled speculation that the academy wanted to create more room for both mainstream and roots-oriented country projects.
Mason says the shift is about expanding recognition, not narrowing it. “Ten nominations versus five is a great outcome,” he explains, pointing out that two categories mean twice as many projects can be honored across the field. Yet viewers scanning the ballot will notice one glaring omission: Morgan Wallen, arguably the biggest star in country music.
Wallen chose not to submit his blockbuster album I’m the Problem for consideration, even though it was the second-most-consumed album of 2025 behind Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl. The decision follows similar Grammys pullbacks by Drake and Frank Ocean and is widely interpreted as a rebuke of an awards system that some high-profile artists still view with suspicion.
Mason says he reached out directly to Wallen. “I’ve definitely reached out to see if there’s something we need to address or if there’s something that he has a concern with,” the CEO explains, adding that he is “always going to do that because we want artists to feel like the Grammy organization is here for them.”
Fab Morvan, Milli Vanilli, and a rare Grammy second chance
Grammys 2026 also revisit one of the most infamous chapters in the Recording Academy’s history. Fab Morvan, the former member of Milli Vanilli, is back on the ballot in the audiobook category for his memoir, which digs into the duo’s late-’80s rise with hits like “Blame It on the Rain” and “Girl You Know It’s True” and the collapse that followed when Morvan and Rob Pilatus were revealed not to have sung on Milli Vanilli’s records.
As part of that scandal, the academy revoked Milli Vanilli’s best new artist trophy, the only time that particular award has ever been taken back in the Grammys’ nearly seven-decade history. Mason has called Morvan’s return one of the Grammys’ most unique comeback stories and wonders aloud whether voters will “complete the circle by giving him the win.”
Analysis: The Morvan nomination is a reminder that the Grammys are still wrestling with their past. A win would not erase what happened in the late 1980s, but it would signal a willingness to rethink how the institution treats artists who were once at the center of its most embarrassing controversies.
Inside the Recording Academy: membership, diversity, and 95 categories
Behind the scenes, Mason points to what he calls an “evolution” of the Recording Academy’s membership. Over his six years as CEO, the organization has pushed to bring in more working musicians, songwriters, producers, and engineers from outside the traditional major-label pipeline. In November, the academy added 3,800 new members, 58% of whom are people of color and 35% of whom identify as women.
Mason argues that this changing electorate is why artists like Bad Bunny and Rosé are now receiving top-tier nominations. Among this year’s other leading contenders are Lamar, Carpenter, Lady Gaga, Leon Thomas, Doechii, SZA, and Tyler, the Creator. With some 95 categories on the books, Mason knows it is “very hard to get 95 categories right and not have somebody be offended or feel left out,” but he also believes the current voting pool reflects the modern music landscape more accurately than it did a decade ago.
Ratings pressure and the end of the CBS era
All of this is happening under serious ratings pressure. After three consecutive years of growth, the 2025 Grammys telecast slipped 9%, drawing 15.4 million viewers. That drop came even as the telecast turned into an improvised disaster-relief fundraiser, which makes 2026 a crucial test of whether a more performance-driven show can keep broad audiences watching live.
It is also the last hurrah for the Grammys on CBS. Winston notes that he likely would not have gotten the job of producing the show if CBS executive Jack Sussman had not been familiar with his work on The Late Late Show with James Corden. The 2026 broadcast will include a moment looking back at what Winston calls “an incredible 50 years” of Grammys on CBS, but he is resisting any full-scale nostalgia play with a parade of former hosts.
Looking ahead, the Grammys will move to ABC in 2027 under a 10-year deal for which Disney is paying more than $500 million. Mason says audiences should expect changes once the show settles into its new home across ABC, Disney+, and Hulu. He has also taken note of the Academy Awards’ plan to move their ceremony to YouTube in 2029, even as he insists that the Grammys’ focus, for now, is squarely on the Disney platforms.
Grammys 2026: what to watch for on music’s biggest night
As the curtain rises on the Grammys 2026, a few threads will define the night. Lamar is chasing history with nine nominations. Gaga is poised for another statement performance as the second most-nominated artist of the year. Bad Bunny and the creators of Debí Tirar Más Fotos could deliver the first Spanish-language album of the year win, while Rosé, KPop Demon Hunters, and the team behind “Golden” represent K-pop’s best shot yet at breaking the Grammys ceiling.
In country music, the split into best contemporary country album and best traditional country album will test whether more categories can cool down the kind of discourse that surrounded Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter last year, even as Morgan Wallen stands outside the process by choice. And in the background, the Recording Academy is trying to prove that a more diverse membership, a more global slate of nominees, and a more daring production can keep the Grammy Awards 2026 relevant in a fractured TV landscape.
Whether or not the show solves all of the Grammys’ long-running criticisms, one thing seems certain. With Trevor Noah’s final hosting gig, a sprawling performer list that runs from Addison Rae and Olivia Dean to Reba McEntire and Ms. Lauryn Hill, and a country-music shake-up that could reshape future ballots, Grammys 2026 will not be a quiet night in Los Angeles.
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