Olivia Dean was the big winner at the 2026 Brit awards, taking home awards for artist of the year, pop act, song of the year for her Sam Fender duet Rein Me In, and album of the year for The Art of Loving.<\/p>\n
In less than a year, Dean has leaped to the forefront of British pop thanks to The Art of Loving, her second album. With songs that get to the heart of the joys and frustrations of casual modern dating, she is enormously relatable, while her sophisticated and cosmopolitan songcraft, deftly finessing styles such as bossa nova, trip-hop, neo-soul and jazz together, has given her an unusually broad and cross-generational appeal.<\/p>\n
The 26-year-old also won one of the \u201cbig four\u201d Grammy awards this year, best new artist, underlining her considerable commercial success in the US as well as the UK.<\/p>\n
Accepting the award for album of the year, Dean said: \u201cThis album is just about love, and loving each other in a world that feels loveless right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dean won in each of the Brit award categories she was nominated in, and actually triumphed over herself in the song of the year category, having also been nominated for her solo track Man I Need, which has barely been out of the UK Top 10 since its release in August. The song category was voted for by the public via WhatsApp, as was the award for international song of the year, won by Ros\u00e9 and Bruno Mars<\/a> for APT.<\/p>\n Rein Me In, a poignant song of love gone asunder, was originally a solo track by Fender included on his album People Watching, before it was released as a single with a new verse from Dean: their version is now top of the UK singles chart. While Dean beat him to the album of the year award, Fender also won the alternative\/rock category, his third win in that category after triumphing in 2022 and 2025 (he also won the critics\u2019 choice award in 2019).<\/p>\n Slow burn \u2026 Lola Young wins breakthrough artist. Photograph: Adam Vaughan\/EPA<\/p>\n Fender and Dean were the only multiple winners in the ceremony, held for the first time in Manchester at the city\u2019s Co-op Live arena.<\/p>\n Returning host Jack Whitehall kept up his usual high-tempo zingers lampooning various celebrities, calling US singer Alex Warren \u201cwhat you get if you order Ed Sheeran on Temu\u201d, saying Robbie Williams had \u201cmore comebacks than his hairline\u201d, describing Shaun Ryder and Bez as \u201cageing like service station flowers\u201d, and saying to Manchester mayor Andy Burnham that the Brits was evidently \u201cthe only party he\u2019s allowed into these days\u201d.<\/p>\n Whitehall even poked fun at another awards ceremony, promising that the Brits had \u201cthe guy who did the Baftas\u201d manning the button to silence any swearing on the TV broadcast \u2013 a reference to the N-word controversy<\/a> that dogged British film\u2019s own biggest night last week. A Whitehall joke about Peter Mandelson being on the guestlist \u2013 \u201cno, sorry, that was another list\u201d \u2013 was duly edited out by ITV.<\/p>\n Dean\u2019s main rival was Lola Young, who also received five nominations, but made do with one win for breakthrough artist. That breakthrough has happened in fits and starts over a number of years: Young was nominated for the critics\u2019 choice award back in 2021 and is now on her third album. Her song Messy, released in May 2024, was itself a slow burner, reaching UK No 1 eight months later \u2013 meaning that most of the song\u2019s success came in this year\u2019s Brits eligibility period.<\/p>\n Dean\u2019s supremacy also meant there were no awards for Lily Allen, who in another year might have expected to win at least one of her three nominations, given her album West End Girl was critically acclaimed and one of the most talked-about pop cultural phenomena of 2025.<\/p>\n Wolf Alice won group of the year for the second time \u2013 they previously triumphed in 2022, thanks to their album The Clearing, an ambitious and sumptuous record anchored by spirited vocals from frontwoman Ellie Rowsell. She dedicated the award in part to the \u201cpubs and clubs and grassroots venues across the country where we quite literally learned to play\u201d, acknowledging the difficulties the sector is facing. She also called for better support for artists, saying that going into the music industry \u201cshouldn\u2019t feel like a golden ticket but a viable career decision\u201d.<\/p>\n Dave won the hip-hop\/grime\/rap act, the clear favourite after the phenomenal success of his album The Boy Who Played the Harp<\/a> and its globally popular UK No 1 single Raindance.<\/p>\n Another British rapper, Skepta, shared the dance act prize with producers Fred Again<\/a> and PlaqueBoyMax thanks to their dubstep-leaning collaboration Victory Lap \u2013 it\u2019s Fred Again\u2019s first win in the category after three previous nominations.<\/p>\n After losing to Raye in 2024, the spotlight-shy collective Sault<\/a>, headed by producer Inflo, won R&B act.<\/p>\n Inventive \u2026 Rosal\u00eda wins international artist of the year award. Photograph: Scott A Garfitt\/Invision\/AP<\/p>\n Relative underdogs won each of the other two international categories. Inventive Catalan pop singer Rosal\u00eda<\/a>, whose album Lux was a bold splicing of neo-classical and avant-electronic styles, triumphed over commercial juggernauts such as Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny and Sabrina Carpenter to win international artist.<\/p>\n And defeating arena-filling acts such as Haim and Tame Impala in the international group category was Geese<\/a>, the young NYC indie rock band whose album Getting Killed blew minds with wise-beyond-their-years lyrics and imaginative arrangements.<\/p>\n The band\u2019s Max Bassin said \u201cfree Palestine, fuck ICE\u201d as part of a short acceptance speech, while Scottish singer-songwriter Jacob Alon, winner of the critics\u2019 choice award, held a keffiyeh scarf aloft during an appearance by Sharon Osbourne, who has previously criticised pro-Palestine campaigners.<\/p>\n K-pop was well represented: Ros\u00e9\u2019s win for APT makes her the first K-pop award winner in Brit awards history, and the ceremony also had its first K-pop performance, with the flesh-and-blood vocalists of the animated group Huntr\/x, from the film KPop Demon Hunters<\/a>, performing their song Golden in a pre-recorded segment.<\/p>\n