Why Wasn’t Taylor Swift Nominated for Any Grammys?

The artist with the most Album of the Year awards is absent from the 2026 Grammy nominations. Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl isn’t up for any awards — this year, at least. The 2026 Grammys eligibility period ran from August 31, 2024, through August 30, 2025, bumping Swift’s October 3 album into next year’s ceremony. That window is how we get 2024 releases like Leon Thomas’s Mutt competing for Album of the Year against Sabrina Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend. The February 1 awards show will air nearly a year and a half after Thomas released his record in September 2024. (Fun fact: Carpenter’s Grammy-winning album, Short n’ Sweet, came out about a month before Mutt.)

Swift is on the bench with a slew of artists whose work appeared this fall. Cardi B, Rosalía, Doja Cat, Tame Impala, Gucci Mane, and Sudan Archives have all released either critically acclaimed or widely popular records in the past two months — nearly enough to fill the next Album of the Year category already. Next year’s nominated artists will get one big promotional benefit: The 2027 Grammy Awards will be aired by Disney’s ABC instead of CBS after the corporation bought the show in October 2024. And the House of Mouse is planning a promotional blitz. “Our big sell was ‘Here’s what we can do on Disney,’” Walt Disney Television alternative-TV chief Rob Mills told Vulture in May. “We can do Grammy-winner night on Idol. We can do a Grammy night on Dancing With the Stars. We could do a date on The Bachelor where they go to the Grammy Museum and a musical artist performs.” Swift may not be nominated this year, but expect to see a big Disney-branded Showgirl moment in 2027.