The Grammys New Country Category, Explained

The Grammy Awards have switched up their categories, including genre-specific category breakdowns, multiple times in years past. But it happens rarely enough that it’s still a pretty big deal.

This year marks an especially big move for country: The Best Country Album category is splitting into two, Best Traditional Country Album and Best Contemporary Country Album.

But why did the Recording Academy decide to add a category this year specifically?

And an even bigger question: Will the addition help deliver more recognition for country artists who haven’t won in the past?

Read More: Grammys Add New Country Category for 2026

When the Recording Academy announced the change last summer, CEO Harvey Mason Jr. said it was an effort to “stay in tune with what’s happening with [the] genre.”

In one sense, the addition of the new category is simply a way of catching the country genre up with other genres represented at the Grammys.

Country Music Isn’t the Only Genre With Multiple Album Categories

Many other genres already divide up their album awards into separate categories, some even falling along the same traditional/progressive divide as the new country setup.

The Grammys already give out separate awards for Best Rock Album and Best Alternative Music Album, for example, both under the Rock, Metal & Alternative umbrella. R&B has an even closer parallel, with separate awards for Best R&B Album and Best Progressive R&B Album.

What’s the Difference Between the Best Traditional Album Category and the Americana Category?

Several different album awards already exist under the country umbrella, for genres like Americana, folk, blues (both traditional and contemporary), bluegrass and regional roots music.

Typically, listeners think of Americana as a catch-all for music informed by roots music and folk. Grammys.com describes it as a “cultural quilt” stitched from a variety of different roots sounds, and the definition is intentionally broad, allowing for a wide range of music to fall into the category.

This year’s nominees for Best Americana Album include Jon Batiste, Larkin Poe, Jesse Welles, Molly Tuttle and Willie Nelson — the latter of whom is also a Traditional Country Album nominee, but for a different album.

Why Did the Grammy Awards Add a New Country Category For 2026? 

Splitting the genre into two categories that reflect country music’s range from the roots-focused to the experimental suggests that the Academy is creating room for the genre’s more traditional artists to be recognized.

Zach Top and Chris Stapleton are two artists who stand to benefit (though with 11 wins and 26 nominations under his belt, Stapleton’s doing just fine going head to head with more experimentally-minded artists.) It also creates a solid category for the country radio-eschewing, but still much-lauded, Charley Crockett.

Read More: Every Country Music Grammy Winner From 1958 to Today

But theoretically, the category switch-up would allow for someone like Stapleton and someone like Kelsea Ballerini, who records in a more progressive and genre-blending style, to win an album Grammy in the same year.

The awards show doesn’t have to choose between country music’s two dominant, and very different, forces — it can acknowledge them both.

Did Beyoncé Cause the Grammys to Add a New Country Category? 

In 2025, Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter album won Best Country Album, as well as the all-genre Album of the Year award. And, well, a lot of country listeners weren’t happy.

The thrust of those fans’ distaste for Beyoncé stems from a feeling that she, a pop superstar who is both the winningest and most-nominated artist in Grammys history, swung through the genre simply because she could, and her popularity outside of the genre blotted out any chance a career genre artist might’ve had to win the trophy.

Read More: Luke Bryan Says Beyoncé Should Have Spent More Time in the Country World

Country pushback against Beyoncé’s country project predates last year’s Grammys; the singer herself said she “did not feel welcomed” in her first forays into the genre.

But her Grammys sweep left fans feeling that her wins prevented wins from others who have dedicated their whole careers to the genre. And the establishment of the new category the very next year stirred up speculation that the Academy might be trying to prevent a future scenario in which buzzy out-of-genre artists could scoop up Grammys at career country artists’ expense.

Read More: Are the Grammys Snubbing Country? CEO Weighs In

The Academy hasn’t specifically addressed that theory, but in a recent conversation with Variety, CEO Harvey Mason Jr. fielded a question on why there aren’t any country artists in all-genre categories in 2026.

He said that the Academy tries to keep things fair and balanced by ensuring that all genres are equally represented in the voting body. So by that logic, the adjustment process would have more to do with who’s responsible for voting — not what the results were the year prior.

Who’s Nominated in Both Country Album Categories at the 2026 Grammys?

When the Academy first announced the new category, the big question was how the nominees for Contemporary Country Album and Traditional Country Album would differ.

This year’s nominees list provides some answers, but honestly, it’s all still a little puzzling. Here are the nominees in both album categories.

Best Traditional Country Album:

Charley Crockett, Dollar a Day
Lukas Nelson, American Romance
Willie Nelson, Oh What a Beautiful World
Margo Price, Hard Headed Woman
Zach Top, Ain’t in It for My Health

Best Contemporary Country Album:

Kelsea Ballerini, Patterns
Tyler Childers, Snipe Hunter
Eric Church, Evangeline vs. the Machine
Jelly Roll, Beautifully Broken
Miranda Lambert, Postcards From Texas

Some of these were as expected, like Zach Top, Margo Price and Charley Crockett in the Traditional Country category, and Jelly Roll and Kelsea Ballerini for Contemporary Country.

There’s also a fun match-up going on with the traditionalists, as Willie Nelson goes head to head against his son Lukas.

But it’s interesting to see Tyler Childers, an artist typically on the rootsier side of things sonically, in the Contemporary Country Album category. It’s possible that he was slotted into the Contemporary category because of his album’s more progressive lyrical themes.

But then why is Miranda Lambert, whose Postcards From Texas album dealt with fairly traditional subject matter, also in the Contemporary category, and not slotted in with the Traditional album nominees?

Will the New Category Solve the Grammys’ Country Problem?

Last fall, Billboard looked at the longstanding dissonance between country music’s high national popularity and its modest Grammys performance, calling the genre the show’s “poor relation.”

Artists like Willie Nelson, Chris Stapleton and Kacey Musgraves have received exceptional recognition at the Grammys, but many of the genre’s biggest mainstream artists — including Luke Bryan, Blake Shelton and Kenny Chesney — have zero Grammy awards to their names.

Morgan Wallen is another who has yet to bring home a golden gramophone. He’s 0/2 in nominations, despite arguably being the biggest artist working in the genre. (Wallen declined consideration in 2025, but a historic lack of solo nominations suggests he might not have received any nods even if he hadn’t.)

The new country category means another spot for an artist to win each year, but will that translate to more love for the mainstream radio set? The data from this year isn’t promising.

Of the 10 artists nominated across both country album categories, only one (Zach Top) is a first-time nominee at the show. Some, like Church and Childers, are perennial nominees who haven’t yet won an award. And a couple, like Lambert, already have multiple wins banked over their careers.

Splitting the Country Album category into Traditional and Contemporary groups could well deliver a more accurate representation of the genre, but as of this year, the bulk of the nominees in either category still have one thing in common: They’re Grammy darlings. A more effective move toward genre representation would be an uptick in first-time nominees, or nominees that haven’t won in the past.