The Grammy Awards is adding five new categories, including best Asian pop music performance and best Latin song.
It comes after Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny became the first artist to win the coveted album of the year prize for a Spanish-language record, and KPop Demon Hunters anthem Golden also made history at the US ceremony earlier this year.
The annual award show – regarded as music’s biggest night – hands out gongs to artists in a huge range of genres.
Grammys chief executive Harvey Mason Jr said expanding the number of categories made the event “more inclusive” and enabled the awards to “represent more music creators, artists, writers and producers”.
The Recording Academy, which organises the Grammy Awards, added a number of Korean and Latino artists to its voting panel last year – a move widely seen as laying the ground for an expansion.
Mason Jr said the changes “were all inspired by our music community sharing with us that they felt they needed to have more opportunities to celebrate different and new genres of music”.
Tracks hoping to be nominated for the new best Latin song award will need to be “predominantly in the Spanish language”, while music across Asian pop genres, including K-pop, J-pop and C-pop, is eligible.
Bad Bunny, who was the world’s most-played artist in 2025 according to Spotify, also picked up the best música urbana album for Debí Tirar Más Fotos (I Should Have Taken More Photos) and best global music performance at the Grammys in February.
While Golden, the inescapable hit from the movie KPop Demon Hunters, performed by the fictional band Huntr/x, was the first ever K-Pop song to win a Grammy for best song for visual media.
Its success reflected a growing recognition of Korean pop’s cultural and commercial force.
Other new awards are best R&B collaboration or duo/group performance, best traditional pop vocal performance and best traditional folk album.
The existing R&B performance category has been renamed to focus on solo acts, while the existing folk album prize will now be dedicated to contemporary folk.
Eligibility criteria for best new artist have also been changed, and the number of times a performer can be submitted has increased from three to four.
It means up-and-coming acts such as Ravyn Lenae and Ella Langley, who have already been put forward in three previous years, can be nominated again.
The new categories and rules will take effect at next year’s ceremony.
Credit: BBC
