Latin-rock trailblazer Carlos Santana, who grew up in Tijuana, has been selected as a 2026 Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award recipient. The legendary guitarist and band leader will be saluted alongside fellow Lifetime Achievement honorees Chaka Khan, Cher and Paul Simon at the Special Merit Awards, an invitation-only event hosted by the Recording Academy, under whose auspices the Grammy Awards are presented.

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Whitney Houston and Afrobeat music pioneer Fela Kuti will be posthumously honored with Lifetime Achievement Grammys at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles on Jan. 31. The ceremony will be held one day before the 68th annual Grammy Awards telecast takes place a few miles away at Crypto.com Arena.

Other 2026 Grammy Special Merit honorees include Elton John lyricist Bernie Taupin, Latin-jazz pioneer Eddie Palmieri (who died Aug. 6) and veteran record industry executive Sylvia Rhone. All three will receive the Trustees Award, which is an honor for non-performers who have made significant contributions to the music industry.

Composer and computer-music visionary John Chowning is the 2026 Technical Grammy Award recipient. At 91, he is the oldest living 2026 Special Merit honoree.

“It’s a true honor to recognize this year’s Special Merit Award recipients — an extraordinary group whose influence spans generations, genres and the very foundation of modern music,” Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. said in a statement. “Each of these honorees has made a profound and lasting impact, and we look forward to celebrating their remarkable achievements.”

Santana, 78, was born in the Mexican state of Jalisco. His family moved to Tijuana in 1955 when he was 7. After learning violin from his mariachi band leader father, he switched to electric guitar and began playing in bands led by pioneering Mexican blues-rock guitarist Javier Batiz, who taught and mentored him.

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“My Tijuana is the world now…” Santana said in a 2023 Union-Tribune interview.

“Once I heard the sound Javier had I knew, right then and there, this was what I would be and that this is all I would be. So, I decided to learn what Javier was playing, which was (music by) Little Richard, B.B. King and Ray Charles. And after that, in San Francisco, I started listening to John Coltrane and Miles Davis.”

As a teenager, Santana would regularly visit San Diego.

“We’d … go to a (downtown) music store called Apex,” he recalled in his 2023 Union-Tribune interview. “I’d just drool at the guitars, and say: ‘Oh, look at that one! Look at the shape of that one!’ Some people drool over Playboy; I drooled over guitars.”

Santana and the band that bears his name will embark on a 10-city concert tour that starts March 28 and concludes April 11. Fellow honoree Simon, 84, will do a tour of Europe in the spring. Khan, 72, has three U.S. concerts scheduled for February. Cher, 79, concluded her most recent farewell tour in 2020.