Grammys Add Asian Pop and Latin Song Categories
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- The Recording Academy is adding five new Grammy categories, including best Asian pop music performance (covering K-pop, J-pop, and C-pop) and best Latin song, with eligibility requiring tracks to be "predominantly in the Spanish language"
- Harvey Mason Jr, CEO of the Recording Academy, said the changes were "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" and would make the event "more inclusive"
- The expansion follows Bad Bunny's February win for album of the year — the first for a Spanish-language record — and Golden from the movie KPop Demon Hunters (performed by fictional band Huntr/x) becoming the first K-Pop song to win best song for visual media
- Bad Bunny, who Spotify named the world's most-played artist of 2025, also took home best música urbana album for Debí Tirar Más Fotos and best global music performance at the February ceremony
- The Recording Academy added Korean and Latino artists to its voting panel last year, a move widely seen as groundwork for the category expansion
- Additional new awards include best R&B collaboration or duo/group performance, best traditional pop vocal performance, and best traditional folk album, while existing R&B and folk categories are being renamed and narrowed to solo acts and contemporary folk, respectively
- Best new artist eligibility is also changing: performers can now be submitted up to four times (up from three), reopening the door for acts like Ravyn Lenae and Ella Langley who have already been put forward three times
Why it matters: The five new categories take effect at next year's Grammys and codify a shift the Academy spent a year preparing for — expanding the voting panel with Korean and Latino members, then building dedicated awards around Spanish-language and Asian pop genres that drove the ceremony's most-talked-about 2025 moments (Bad Bunny's album of the year, Golden's K-Pop visual-media win). Artists who have already burned through their three best new artist submissions get a fresh shot under the new four-submission cap.
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