Kendrick Lamar, Lady Gaga lead Grammy nominations, Perth’s Tame Impala scores nom

Rapper Kendrick Lamar has topped the list of Grammy contenders for the second straight year with nine nominations, outpacing the seven nods for pop superstar Lady Gaga in the race for the music industry’s top honours.

Lamar’s GNX and Gaga’s Mayhem will compete for the prestigious album of the year trophy at the Grammy Awards 2026 ceremony in February. Neither artist has won that prize despite multiple nominations in the category.

Others nominated in the album field include Bad Bunny for the Spanish-language Debí Tirar Más Fotos, Justin Bieber for Swag and Sabrina Carpenter for Man’s Best Friend.

Three rap albums are in contention. In addition to GNX, Tyler the Creator’s Chromakopia and Let God Sort Em Out, from the duo Clipse, were nominated.

The Life of a Showgirl by Taylor Swift, who has claimed album of the year an unmatched four times, was not in the running because it was released after this year’s Grammy eligibility window.

On the Australian front, Amyl and the Sniffers is nominated in the best rock performance category for U Should Not Be Doing That, while Tame Impala earned a nod for End of Summer and Rüfüs Du Sol for Inhale/Exhale in the best dance/electronic song and album categories respectively.

News of EDM group Rüfüs Du Sol’s nomination comes ahead of their second Perth concert, which will take place at RAC Arena on Saturday night.

Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican musician who will perform at next year’s Super Bowl halftime show, received six nominations including for record, song and album of the year. He was the first Latin artist to be nominated in the three major categories in the same year.

Two K-pop songs landed in the song of the year field, an award given to songwriters. They are the chart-topping Golden from the soundtrack of KPop Demon Hunters, the most-watched movie in the history of Netflix, and Apt by Rosé and Bruno Mars.

In the best new artist category, Olivia Dean and Katseye will compete with Leon Thomas, Alex Warren and others. Thomas, an R&B and soul musician, also received an album of the year nomination for Mutt.

Grammy winners will be chosen by the roughly 15,000 voting members of the Recording Academy and announced at a red-carpet ceremony in Los Angeles on February 1.