This year’s list was compiled from votes by an international panel of more than 170 industry experts and artists including Sir Elton John, Dua Lipa, Jade, Olivia Dean, Yungblud and Sam Smith.<\/p>\n
It is open to acts who have yet to score a number one album or more than three top 10 singles by 31 October 2025. Artists who already have a “significant public profile” are also ineligible.<\/p>\n
The remaining nominees for 2026 include breakout rap star Jim Legxacy, Irish rockers Florence Road, R&B singer Kwn and singer-songwriter Sasha Keable – a former collaborator with Disclosure and Jorja Smith.<\/p>\n
The list has been running since 2003, when US rapper 50 Cent was the first winner. <\/p>\n
Since then, it has also predicted success for Stormzy, Frank Ocean, Wet Leg, Florence + The Machine, Raye, Fred Again, Vampire Weekend and Yungblud.<\/p>\n
Here’s what you need to know about the 10 nominees on the Sound Of 2026 shortlist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This year’s list was compiled from votes by an international panel of more than 170 industry experts and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294089,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-294088","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}