A few weeks ago, Ben Winston and the rest of the team behind the annual Grammy Awards telecast were going over plans for this year’s show when suddenly Winston recalled sitting in the same room with the same people almost exactly 12 months earlier as the Palisades and Eaton wildfires were ravaging large swaths of Los Angeles.
“We were looking at the fire over the road from my office — you could see it,” the Emmy-winning television producer recalls. “I remember we were like, ‘Is there even going to be a show?’”
The Recording Academy ended up going ahead with the 67th Grammys albeit with significant changes to the program, including a new opening number that had the band Dawes (whose drummer Griffin Goldsmith lost his home in Altadena) performing Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.” with help from Sheryl Crow and John Legend, among others.
“We basically put on a Grammy show in two weeks,” Winston says now of last year’s ceremony, which the academy retooled as a fundraiser that brought in more than $9 million for fire relief through its MusiCares foundation. “I look back on it as one of the most insane things we ever did.”
Preparation for the 68th Grammys — set to air live on CBS and Paramount+ on Sunday night from Crypto.com Arena — is going much more smoothly, Winston reports with a look of relief. Yet the show, which he’s overseeing alongside Raj Kapoor and Jesse Collins, will still be a feat to pull off, with about 10 televised award presentations and more than two dozen performers, among them Sabrina Carpenter, Pharrell Williams, Addison Rae, Clipse and Alex Warren.
After three years of climbing ratings, TV viewership for the 2025 Grammys fell 9% to 15.4 million, according to data from Nielsen. So the pressure is on to bring an audience to Sunday’s telecast, which will mark the end of the academy’s half-century partnership with CBS before the Grammys move to Disney’s ABC network in 2027.
To hear what’s in store — and what this year’s nominations say about the year in music — The Times spoke with Winston and with Recording Academy Chief Executive Harvey Mason Jr.
New voting members in the mix
Let’s get it out of the way: No, Bad Bunny will not perform on the show. Though the Puerto Rican superstar has six Grammy nods — including album of the year with “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” and record and song of the year with the LP’s title track — his gig next month headlining halftime at Super Bowl LX means he’s not available to play the Grammys, according to Winston. (The same was true last year of Kendrick Lamar ahead of his performance at Super Bowl LIX.)
The executive producer, who points out that Bad Bunny is expected to attend Sunday’s ceremony, takes a glass-half-full view of not being able to book one of music’s biggest acts. “It gives space for somebody else to come in and do an amazing performance,” Winston says. “I think it’s right for both shows that we don’t feature the same artists, because we want the audience to see new and different things.”
A win for “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” would mark the first time a Spanish-language LP was named album of the year at the Grammys; the academy’s recent invitation to members of the Latin Recording Academy might make that outcome more likely, given that “Fotos” won album of the year at November’s Latin Grammys ceremony in Las Vegas.
Mason talks with pride about what he calls the “evolution” of the academy’s membership, which has grown more diverse over his six years as CEO. In November, the group said it had added 3,800 new members, 58% of whom are people of color and 35% of whom identify as women; Mason credits that changing electorate for bestowing high-level nods on artists like Bad Bunny and Rosé, the Blackpink singer whose “Apt.” is the first song by a K-pop act ever nominated for record of the year. (Among this year’s other top nominees are Lamar, Carpenter, Lady Gaga, Leon Thomas, Doechii, SZA and Tyler, the Creator.)
Asked half-jokingly if he ever misses the days when Grammy nominations regularly inspired outrage over how out of touch the Recording Academy was, Mason says, “I don’t miss people being upset. But I also don’t discount that it’s going to happen again. It’s very hard to get 95 categories right and not have somebody be offended or feel left out.”
Trevor Noah’s last laugh as host
Having hosted the Grammys since 2021 — when much of the ceremony took place outside, with nominees wearing masks amid the COVID-19 pandemic — Trevor Noah has said this will be his last time leading the show.
“He actually intimated that he might not be able to do it this year,” Winston says of the comedian and former “Daily Show” host. “I went back and begged — like, literally sent him a video where I was on my knees.”
Mason describes Noah as “super funny but respectful — and not cringey funny, which is important for our show.” Winston adds that “he can cope unbelievably well on live television when I’m in his ear. We’re building a Sabrina set and still taking down the set of the last performer, and I’m going, ‘Really sorry, mate — you need to fill for another minute and a half.’ He can effortlessly do that without anybody in the world knowing what’s going on in his earpiece. That is priceless.”
Does the producer know who might replace Noah in 2027? “I have a couple of ideas, but I haven’t told the academy yet,” says Winston, who himself took over the Grammys from the show’s longtime producer, Ken Ehrlich, in 2021.
Newbies take the stage
As on last year’s show, all eight nominees for best new artist will perform on Sunday’s telecast, this time in a single extended sequence that Winston likens to the experience of listening to the radio or to a playlist.
“No one listens to a song and then they have a three-minute break and then they come back and listen to another song,” he says. “Raj and Jesse and I really like it when we can press play and it never stops.”
He also has a potential surprise performance planned à la the Weeknd’s appearance in 2025, which wasn’t announced in advance. “It would be my preference to announce it, if I’m honest, but it might end up having to be a surprise,” Winston says of whatever he has in the works for Sunday. “Sometimes artists are like, ‘Don’t say,’ I think because they want the audience to be surprised.
“But then the cynical person in me also thinks maybe they want to hedge their bet,” he adds, “in case they don’t fancy doing it on the day.”
New country award, but no Mo’
Among the 95 categories Mason refers to is a new award for traditional country album, which the academy added this year in response to a request from the organization’s Nashville contingent. (The country album category — carried last year by Beyoncé with “Cowboy Carter” — has been renamed contemporary country album.)
Mason frames the addition as a way to recognize more music at the Grammys: “Ten nominations versus five is a great outcome,” he says. Yet one name you won’t find in either category is the biggest star in country music, Morgan Wallen, who let it be known last year that he’d opted not to submit his blockbuster “I’m the Problem” — the second-most-consumed album of 2025 behind Taylor Swift’s “The Life of a Showgirl” — for consideration by the Recording Academy.
Wallen hasn’t explained his decision (which follows similar ones by the likes of Drake and Frank Ocean), though it’s broadly understood as a rebuke of a value system he considers out of alignment with his own.
Asked for his reaction, Mason says, “I’m always disappointed when anybody says this is not something they want to participate in. I would love to see his music in our process because I’m a fan and I think he has a lot of people who love what he does. But I respect his choice.”
Last year’s performance by the Weeknd, who’d previously boycotted the Grammys in protest of what he characterized as a corrupt voting process, came after some determined bridge-building by the academy’s leader. Has Mason attempted anything similar with Wallen?
“I’ve definitely reached out to see if there’s something we need to address or if there’s something that he has a concern with,” Mason says. (Wallen’s rep had no comment.) Adds the CEO: “I’m always going to do that because we want artists to feel like the Grammy organization is here for them.”
Welcome back?
One unexpected name you will find on the ballot: Fab Morvan.
The former member of Milli Vanilli is nominated in the audiobook category for his memoir, which recounts the duo’s quick rise with late-’80s hits like “Blame It on the Rain” and “Girl You Know It’s True” and its even quicker fall after Morvan and his bandmate Rob Pilatus were revealed not to have sung on Milli Vanilli’s records.
As part of the fallout, the academy revoked the duo’s award for best new artist — the only time that’s happened in the Grammys’ nearly seven-decade history.
“It was such a shock,” Mason says of the lip-syncing scandal. “How do you handle that? I’m glad I wasn’t in the seat when that was going on.”
Mason calls Morvan’s return “one of the most unique Grammy stories ever” and says, “We’ll see if the voters complete the circle by giving him the win.”
Goodbye and hello
Should the Grammys’ leaving CBS mean anything to the average viewer?
“It definitely means something to me,” Winston says. “I don’t think I would have got this job if it hadn’t been on CBS because I was running ‘The Late Late Show’ [with James Corden], and Jack Sussman, who was at CBS at the time, went, ‘Hey, that guy seems all right — you should meet him, Recording Academy.’”
Winston says Sunday’s show will feature “a moment looking back at what an incredible 50 years it’s been on CBS.” But he’s not interested in “a nostalgia play where we bring out all the hosts from previous years or anything like that.”
Looking ahead to the Grammys’ move to ABC — a 10-year deal for which Disney paid more than $500 million, according to the Wall Street Journal — the producer says he’d “love the show to evolve in some way” at its new home.
Adds Mason: “You’ll see changes, I’m sure of it. If we’re not making changes, we’re doing the wrong thing.”
Asked for his thoughts on the news that the Academy Awards will go to YouTube in 2029, Mason says, “The team at the Oscars are very sharp. They’ve done a good job with their organization, and I look forward to seeing what that brings, because it’s something that’s different.” (Winston declined to comment.)
The idea of the Grammys on YouTube — can Mason envision it?
“The idea of the Grammys on ABC and Disney+ and Hulu — that’s what was exciting for us,” he says.
The post What to expect from the 2026 Grammy Awards appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
