Academy of Country Music CEO Damon Whiteside on the Awards Returning to Las Vegas and ‘Leaving on a High Note’
Categoria: Musica
The 2026 ACM Awards will take place on May 17.
Por Billboard | 13/05/2026
The Academy of Country Music Awards may have celebrated its 60th anniversary last year, but one remnant from the birthday remains: the May 17 show will continue in its supersized length. For 2025, the ceremony, which streams on Prime Video, grew from two hours to two hours and 30 minutes, and it will now remain at the expanded time. “I pushed for it simply because we want to have room for more performances and more artists,” ACM CEO Damon Whiteside says. “It’s good to have the extra time. But Prime Video really made the decision that they wanted to continue with that length because they felt that the fans loved it. It still feels much shorter than the traditional broadcast award show that’s three hours, and we’re so light on our commercial load that’s it’s mostly wall-to-wall music.” Tickets for the 61st ACM Awards and ACM Awards week events are available for purchase on AXS.com. Click here for more information. Related Ella Langley, Zach Top & More Added as Performers on 2026 ACM Awards From Loretta Lynn to Shania Twain, All the ACM Awards Hosts Who Ever Won Entertainer of the Year Megan Moroney & More Women Lead 2026 ACM Awards Nominations: Full List This year, Megan Moroney leads all nominees with nine nominations, followed by Miranda Lambert with eight and then Ella Langley and Lainey Wilson with seven each. Langley led all nominees last year with eight. “You look across the board at all nominees, it’s definitely heavily leaning toward a lot of relatively newer acts in a lot of ways, which is awesome to see,” Whiteside says. “There’s just a whole new, exciting crop of artists that are being recognized by the ACMs. From a voter perspective, we tend to be the first to recognize an artist in their career. It’s cool because you hear from a lot of legends that an ACM was their first award.” Rounding out the leading nominees are Chris Stapleton with six, the most of any male artist; followed by Zach Top with five and Cody Johnson and Riley Green , each with four. This year there is no new duo or group category because there were not enough qualified candidates submitted. “An artist or an act needs to submit to be considered for a category, so there’s always some cases where, especially in the new categories, that they choose not to submit in a given year because they may want to wait until they have even more going on because you can only be nominated twice in the category,” Whiteside says. “We expect it will be back next year.” To qualify, an artist must have had a charting song in the year of eligibility, which, for the current awards, was Jan. 1, 2025, to Dec. 31, 2025. There must be at least three qualified nominees. Four awards have already been announced: Songwriter of the year ( Jessie J o Dillon ), new male artist of the year ( Tucker Wetmore ), new female artist of the year ( Avery Anna ) and visual media of the year (“Cuckoo,” Stephen Wilson, Jr. ; producer/director: Tim Cofield). The ACM Awards move back to Las Veg