The Ivors have announced the nominations for 2026, with 61 songwriters and composers recognised across seven categories, celebrating music released in the UK in 2025. The awards take place on 21 May at Grosvenor House in London. The Ivors 2026 nominations are in.

Peer-judged by songwriters and composers, this is still one of the only rooms in the industry where the writing is the point.

Here is the full list.

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Best Song Musically and Lyrically

• Don’t Fall Asleep – Jacob Alon
• Everybody Scream – Mark Bowen, Mitski, Florence Welch
• Focus Is Power – Johan Hugo, Self Esteem, Jacob Vetter
• The Sofa – Ellie Rowsell (Wolf Alice)
• Weeds – Tove Burman, Anya Jones, Jon Shave (Sugababes)

Our bet is on Florence! Everybody Scream – Mark Bowen, Mitski, Florence Welch

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Best Contemporary Song

• Damascus – Damon Albarn, Yasiin Bey, Omar Souleyman
• Free – Alex Bonfanti, Miles Clinton James, Little Simz
• I Do and I Don’t Care – Johan Hugo, Self Esteem
• I Stand On The Line – Fraser T Smith, Kae Tempest
• Know Yourself – Tom Rowlands, Fraser T Smith, Kae Tempest

Our bet is on Know Yourself – Tom Rowlands, Fraser T Smith, Kae Tempest.

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Best Album

• Black British Music (2025) – Jim Legxacy, Joe Stanley
• Euro Country – CMAT
• The Art of Loving – Olivia Dean, Bastian Langebaek, Max Wolfgang
• The Clearing – Joff Oddie, Ellie Rowsell (Wolf Alice)
• West End Girl – Lily Allen, Chloe Angelides, Kito, Blue May

Our bet is on CMAT ftw. Come on, the Royal! The Queen of Dunboyne really, truly deserves this, but Olivia Dean is on a roll, so it’s tough competition this year.

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PRS for Music Most Performed Work

• Man I Need – Olivia Dean, Tobias Jesso Jr., Zach Nahome
• Messy – Lola Young
• Stargazing – Peter Fenn, Jesse Fink, Myles Smith
• The Days – Chrystal
• Viva La Vida – Guy Berryman, Jonny Buckland, Will Champion, Chris Martin (Coldplay)

Our bet is on Messy by Lola Young.

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Rising Star Award with Amazon Music

• Chloe Qisha
• Divorce
• Jacob Alon
• kwn
• Skye Newman

Our bet is on hotly tipped Skye Newman.

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Best Original Film Score

• Bugonia – Jerskin Fendrix
• Dragonfly – Raffertie
• Nosferatu – Robin Carolan
• Testimony – Tom Hodge
• The Brutalist – Daniel Blumberg

Our bet is Bugonia. What a movie, what a soundtrack.

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Best Television Soundtrack

• Adolescence – Aaron May, David Ridley
• Lazarus – Sarah Warne
• Summerwater – Gazelle Twin
• This City Is Ours – Rael Jones
• Trespasses – David Holmes, Brian Irvine

Our bet is Adolescence. Compelling and important.

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What stands out straight away is how consistent certain names are across categories. Jacob Alon appears in both songwriting and Rising Star, which usually means the industry has already clocked something early and is backing it properly. Self Esteem shows up twice, which reflects how strong that writing cycle has been. Kae Tempest landing two nominations in the same category is also not something that happens by accident. Kae is practically a regular at the Ivors and has won before.

Olivia Dean and Lola Young sit in an interesting position this year. They are present in the songwriting conversation but also firmly in the Most Performed category, which is where you see whether something has actually travelled beyond industry circles and into the wider public. Which both absolutely have.

Coldplay’s inclusion of Viva La Vida is a reminder of how powerful their catalogue still is. Years later, it is still one of the most performed songs in the country. That kind of reach does not fade; it compounds. What a band.

Across the board, the writing is strong. There is a clear sense of identity in the work being recognised, and very little of it feels like it has been built purely to chase numbers. At the same time, the wider patterns are still there if you look for them.

There is a clear overlap with artists already moving through the BRITs ecosystem.

That means the same names are showing up across both. You build visibility at the BRITs, you build credibility at the Ivors. One gets you seen, the other gets you respected. It is not random. It is a pathway.

Olivia Dean, Lola Young, Skye Newman, Jacob Alon. These are not isolated nominations. They are part of a wider build happening across multiple industry touchpoints at the same time.

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Visibility and credibility are being built across multiple stages, not in isolation.

No one “breaks” from one moment anymore.

You move through:

• radio
• streaming
• live
• BRITs
• Ivors

Each one adds a layer. By the time you land in a room like the Ivors, the groundwork has already been done elsewhere.

So what looks like recognition is often the result of a longer chain of positioning and financial backing of teams, companies, and labels.

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Gender balance has improved, but it is not level.

Across the 2026 nominations, 61 songwriters and composers are recognised. Of those:

• 40 are men
• 19 are women
• 2 are non-binary

So women make up just over 30 percent of nominees.

That is better than previous years, but it is still far from equal.

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And when you zoom out beyond the Ivors, the wider picture sharpens again.

On radio airplay, men have historically dominated. Earlier UK data showed around 80 percent of airplay going to male artists, with a significant shift in 2024 seeing female artists gaining 2% more airtime than their male counterparts. But across Rock and Indie networks as well as hip hop, etc., we constantly see women significantly under-represented in rotation.

On production, the gap is even more extreme. Women account for only a small single-digit percentage of credited producers on major tracks.

On songwriting splits, women are still underrepresented in collaborative writing rooms, particularly at the top commercial level where publishing power sits.

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The underlying data still tells a more uneven story.

Historically, UK radio has heavily favoured male artists. Female producers remain a small minority. Songwriting rooms are still male-dominated in many cases.

Even when women are visible at artist level, they are not always equally represented behind the scenes.

So a shortlist can look balanced on the surface, but it does not always reflect what is happening underneath.

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That is the key point.

The Ivors show you who has made it through.

The data shows you how difficult it still is to get there in the first place.

Publishing and infrastructure are also doing what they always do. The majority of this work is still connected, in some way, to major publishers or major-aligned systems. Even when the artist looks independent on the surface, the back end often is not.

None of that takes away from the quality of what is here. But it does explain how it gets here.

That is the Ivors in 2026. Strong work, properly recognised, sitting inside an industry that is still working through the same structural questions it has had for years.