What to know
- The Recording Academy is bringing back the Best Album Cover category after a 53-year hiatus.
- The five Best Album Cover nominees at the 2026 Grammy Awards are: Bad Bunny’s Debí Tirar Más Fotos, Tyler, the Creator’s CHROMAKOPIA, Perfume Genius’s Glory, Djo’s The Crux and Wet Leg’s Moisturizer.
Great cover art can make or break an album’s success — and for the first time in over 50 years, the Recording Academy will honour best album covers at the 2026 Grammy Awards.
Last awarded in 1973 to The Siegel-Schwall Band for their self-titled album, the Best Album Cover category is making a comeback after a 53-year hiatus. This year, five albums have been nominated for Best Album Cover: Bad Bunny’s Debí Tirar Más Fotos, Tyler, the Creator’s CHROMAKOPIA, Perfume Genius’s Glory, Djo’s The Crux and Wet Leg’s Moisturizer. The award will be given to the album’s art director(s) and/or photographer(s).
In an interview with Grammy.com, Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. elaborates on one of the reasons for this change.
“In today’s digital world, album covers are arguably more impactful than ever. Chances are, there’s an iconic cover that’s instantly recognizable to you, even if you never owned the physical album. Their cultural significance is undeniable,” he says. “That’s one of the reasons members of the art director community and our Awards & Nominations members felt this category was necessary. The Packaging Field has always thrived, but we expect this to be one of our most inclusive categories to date.”
A brief history of the ‘Best Album Cover’ category
From 1959 to 1961, the Best Recording Package category — which is separate from Best Album Cover and was last awarded to Charli XCX for Brat — was simply known as Best Album Cover. During these short three years, it was won by Frank Sinatra’s Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely, Dmitri Shostakovich’s Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5 and Peggy Lee’s Latin ala Lee!
In 1962, the category was further split into Classical and Non-Classical subcategories. Four years later, in 1966, it underwent another name change, being grouped in the Graphic Arts and Photography divisions.
Later on, in 1969, the award returned as Best Album Cover until 1973, with Thelonious Monk winning for Underground, Gary McFarland for America the Beautiful, B. B. King for Indianola Mississippi Seeds, Franco Battiato for Pollution, and the aforementioned The Siegel–Schwall Band for their self-titled album.
The category’s name changed one more time to Best Album Package from 1974 to 1993 before settling on Best Recording Package — which will still be awarded at next month’s ceremony as a separate category.
The importance of a solid album cover
Alex Southey, a Toronto-based indie rock singer-songwriter, says well thought out cover art can “really underscore the point or points of the album” and get people to care about the visual aspect of music again.
“I think that album art was considered obviously important, back in the day when it was vinyl, because you’d have these open gate folds — and it would be huge — and it would be borderline a decoration in your apartment. This is a way to get people to care more about the art that’s representing the music,” he says. “And sometimes that can mean the difference of it being like an album that sells or an album that doesn’t.”
Elaborating further, Southey says this will also give the artist or photographer who comes up with concept art an opportunity to shine.
“It’s actually going to give whoever took the photo or composed it, it’ll give them the opportunity to discuss theoretically on stage why these things matter, and it’ll inspire more artists to do that. So, I think that’s really cool, actually,” he says.
Being a musician himself, Southey takes a lot of pride in planning out art for his own work. For the cover art on his 2021 album …And the Country Stirred, he leaned into feelings of a great weather change.
“It’s got three people beginning to lift off of the ground in this open field. My friend Felicia Wetterlin — she lives in Sweden now, but we met when we were both at the University of British Columbia — is the one who made that [cover].”
Pop-punk and emo aficionado Isaac Clasky, who plays guitar and writes songs for their two bands, Highlight of the Year and Ever Since We Met, says a good album cover is akin to a good first impression.
“It is the first thing you see when you’re on a streaming site or when you’re on Instagram or you’re in a record store,” they say. “First impressions matter so much, especially if you’re trying to attract an audience or you’re trying to reel people into your music. It’s such a big deal.”
Clasky appreciates the Grammy Awards for recognizing album covers again, explaining, “It’s a whole new way of being able to access art and being able to express art.”
“Being able to look at something while you’re listening to music matters so much. I remember early on in my music discovery days, just holding a CD case and just like looking at it while you hear the music, and being able to, like, express yourself visually as a musician is something that you don’t get to do all the time.”
