Leading up to the Grammy nominations on Nov. 7, Rolling Stone is breaking down 10 different categories. For each, we’re predicting the nominees, as well as who will (and who should) win on Grammy night.
This year’s Best New Artist field is a head-scratcher because it’s just so wide open. “A lot has been going on in specific genre spaces,” says Cecilia Winter, Editorial Lead for Global Hits at Spotify, “but the obvious [nominee] choices that we had this time last year are not as present — with the possible exception of an Alex Warren or a Sombr, who have had hockey-stick growth in the past year and who are also relatively new artists.”
Best New Artist — Our Predictions
Lola Young
Role Model
Sombr
Alex Warren
Yungblud
Megan Moroney
Olivia Dean
The Marías
Who Will Win?
Alex Warren
Warren’s dominance of radio and streaming, as well as his unabashed romanticism, will likely result in him taking home the golden gramophone in February. “’Ordinary’ is such a huge love song,” says Winter. “Warren is in a pantheon of male vocalists who are full of love, and yearning, and heartbreak, and pain—and they don’t shy away from those things. [They’ve] historically been well-recognized by the Grammys.”
Who Should Win?
Lola Young
Young had a fantastic year, following up the success of “Messy” with preview cuts from I’m Only F**ing Myself that showed how she wasn’t going to let that song’s popularity force her to sound a certain way — and how she was going to remain fiercely true to herself in her lyric-writing, too. “She has built this really sticky audience because of these super raw, vulnerable, relatable lyrics,” says Winter. “And she has this really compelling voice and sound.”
Forecasting the Field
Influencer-turned-chart-dominator Warren, whose ballad “Ordinary” had a lock on the Hot 100’s top spot this summer, and Sombr, the flame-keeper of downtown New York cool, are two nomination locks. But, Winter notes, “there aren’t a lot of no-brainer nominees” in terms of acts that are both brand-new and hugely popular.
There are, however, artists who have been knocking around for a while who fit the Best New Artist criterion of having breakthroughs during the nomination year. Raspy-voiced Brit Lola Young released her first album in 2023, but her downcast 2024 cut “Messy” was one of the year’s biggest viral sensations; her shaggily appealing third full-length I’m Only F**king Myself came out on Sept. 19, just after the 2026 Grammys’ eligibility period ended. Witty Nashville upstart Megan Moroney and neo-neo-soul belter Olivia Dean also released their first albums in 2023 but had large leaps into the public consciousness during the September-to-August nomination period.
British yelper Yungblud released his debut in 2018 and has been cultivating a fervent fanbase for his ambitious, acidic music in the years since, but his co-sign from Ozzy Osbourne before the metal titan’s death this summer and his ambitious album Idols raised his profile in the wider rock world. The social-media sensation Role Model and the genre-blurring indie-pop act the Marías also released their first music in the ‘10s, but they found game-changing streaming success with the loose-limbed country-pop cut “Sally, When the Wine Runs Out” and the chill-sounding, anxiety-riddled “No One Noticed,” respectively.
Echoing Winter’s comment on this year’s Best New Artist field being unpredictable, the list of artists who have an outside shot at making the category’s Elite Eight is full of new and new-to-mass-audience acts. KPop Demon Hunters’ heroines Huntr/X laid down a rallying cry, “Golden,” that was strong enough as a pure pop song to transcend its soundtrack status and land in the Hot 100’s top spot. Warren’s fellow Hype House alum Addison Rae released her first full-length — although in contrast to him, her record dwells in what Winter calls “the underground, cool-girl pop space.”
Somewhere between those two acts lies the neo-girlband Katseye, who had streaming success with the sinewy “Gabriela” and the surrealistic “Gnarly.” Leon Thomas began his singing career as a 10-year-old on Broadway, but his second album Mutt and its soulful lead single of the same name have marked him as an R&B star. BigXthaPlug self-released his first mixtape in 2020 but with the collab-heavy I Hope You’re Happy he brought his Southern charm to the modern country world.
