Grammys 2026 LIVE Updates: Nigeria Shines With Five Stars Nominated for 68th Grammy Awards

🚨8:15 PM: WILL WIZKID SWOOP HOME HIS SECOND GRAMMY?

Tonight, Wizkid stands on the edge of history at the 68th Annual Grammy Awards, eyeing his second golden gramophone. While 'Big Wiz' is already the most decorated African artist with reportedly over 150 awards, his current Grammy count sits at one (for 2021's "Brown Skin Girl"). With "Gimme Dat" his heavyweight collaboration with Ayra Starr, the iconic hitmaker enters the ring for Best African Music Performance, a nomination that highlights his continued dominance on the global stage. The energy around this potential win is undeniable. This isn't just about adding another trophy to his massive collection; it’s about his evolution into the ultimate collaborator. If they clinch the win tonight, it will solidify Wizkid's status as the ultimate "closer" who can transform high-level synergy into Grammy gold. Tonight, FC is Team Mobstarrs and Team Mobstarrs is FC!!

🚨8:00 PM: THE CELESTIAL BEING ON THE VERGE OF UNIVERSAL DOMINATION

Ayra Starr enters the 68th Annual Grammy Awards as a definitive force in global music, arriving with the "reassurance" of her second consecutive nomination in the Best African Music Performance category for her Wizkid collaboration, "Gimme Dat." This nomination serves as the ultimate validation for her record-breaking sophomore album, The Year I Turned 21, which cemented her status as the first Nigerian female artist to debut on the Billboard 200 and the first to surpass 1 billion streams on Spotify. Her momentum tonight is backed by a historic winning streak, having recently been crowned Best International Act at the BET Awards and becoming the first woman in 16 years to win Best African Act at the MOBO Awards. Ayra recently shared that this second nomination feels different from her first. She told Billboard, "The first time I got nominated, it was like, 'Oh my God... This is crazy.' But the second time felt like reassurance and just like, 'Oh, I'm good at this. I know what I'm doing.' I just need to trust God and myself a bit more." Whether she takes home the golden gramophone tonight or not, the "Sabi Girl" has already secured her place amongst the next generation of global pop stars.

🚨7:49PM: FIRST TIMERS & DEBUT WIN? Omah Lay is currently nominated for Best African Music Performance. If he wins, he will join the elite club of Nigerians who secured the "golden gramophone" on their first try, following the footsteps of Sade Adu and the great Sikiru Adepoju.

🚨DID YOU KNOW? Burna Boy has been nominated for the Best Global Music Album category five times for his albums African Giant, Twice as Tall, Love, Damini, I Told Them..., and No Sign of Weakness. The Afro-fusion star is also a 13-time Grammy nominee, the most for any Nigerian in history.

🚨BEST GLOBAL MUSIC ALBUM 2026 NOMINEES:

Sounds Of Kumbha — Siddhant Bhatia

No Sign of Weakness — Burna Boy

Éclairer le monde – Light the World — Youssou N’Dour

Mind Explosion (50th Anniversary Tour Live) — Shakti

Chapter III: We Return to Light — Anoushka Shankar featuring Alam Khan & Sarathy Korwar

Caetano e Bethânia Ao Vivo — Caetano Veloso and Maria Bethânia

🚨DID YOU KNOW? Angelique Kidjo has won the category the most, with five wins (four of which have been since 2016). The Beninise icon also has the most nominations in the combined Global/World history with 12 additional nominations. The second group to win most often is Ladysmith Black Mambazo, who have won four times during the combined history of Global/World categories. Soweto Gospel Choir have three wins in the Global/World categories. In the single merged category, Ravi Shankar and Ry Cooder have both won twice. Anoushka Shankar has the second most nominations in the combined categories with nine nominations, and she's also a favourite for the award tonight.

🚨7:25 PM: BEST GLOBAL MUSIC ALBUM: The award for Best Global Music Album, reserved for international performers exhibiting "non-European, indigenous traditions", was first presented to Mickey Hart in 1992 for the album Planet Drum. In 1996, Academy trustees attempted to solve the problem of "compressing 75% or more of the world's music into a single award category" by broadening the definition of "world music" to include non-Western classical music. Beginning in 2001, award recipients included the producers, engineers, and/or mixers associated with the nominated work in addition to the recording artists. Following the 45th Grammy Awards in 2003, the award was split into two separate categories for Best Traditional World Music Album and Best Contemporary World Music Album. In 2012, the two categories were merged back to Best World Music Album. In 2020, The Recording Academy announced it would be changing the name of the category to Best Global Music Album.

🚨BEST AFRICAN MUSIC PERFORMANCE 2026 NOMINEES:

"Love" – Burna Boy

"With You" – Davido ft. Omah Lay

"Gimme Dat" – Ayra Starr ft. Wizkid

"Push 2 Start" – Tyla (South Africa)

"Hope & Love" – Eddy Kenzo & Mehran Matin (Uganda)

🚨7:10 PM: ICYMI, let's walk you through all the categories when Nigeria's music stars were nominated at the 68th Recording Academy Awards.

🚨7:05 PM: We broke this down earlier today. In a separate deep dive, Pulse looked at Nigeria’s chances at the 2026 Grammy Awards, including which artists are best positioned and why this year could be significant. If you want the full context before the awards begin, this piece is worth catching up on. We’ll keep this live blog focused on real-time updates as the night approaches.

🚨7:02 PM: Before the awards begin, here are the key categories to watch for Nigerian representation tonight: Best African Music Performance, Best Global Music Performance & Best Global Music Album. These are the spaces where Nigerian artists have made the strongest impact over the past year both commercially and culturally. As always with the Grammys, surprises happen. But these categories are where the spotlight is most likely to land.