The Mercury prize, handed out yearly to the best British or Irish album as voted for by a panel of music industry figures and worth £25,000, has gone to Raye. Her second studio album, This Music May Contain Hope, beat a shortlist that included Paul McCartney, Suede, Dave and Florence + the Machine at the ceremony in Newcastle.

The winning album

The record is a hugely ambitious 73-minute work that spans big band jazz, power balladry, funk and more. It topped the UK charts and contains the global hit Where Is My Husband!, which reached No 1 in the UK and No 6 in the US.

The judges, a panel chaired by Jeff Smith and including Afrodeutsche, Danielle Perry, Jamie Cullum, Lea Stonhill, MistaJam, Phil Alexander, Sian Eleri, Sophie Williams and Will Hodgkinson, praised what they called Raye's real imagination and scope in showing what an album can be, going beyond any one style or genre, saying it would inspire for years. They hailed its scale, structure, ambition and sheer charm.

The acceptance and the journey

Collecting the award on stage, Raye told the crowd: "> I cannot tell you how grateful I am to be holding this. I'm shaking, I'm jetlagged, I'm tired, I'm grateful!"

She alluded to her difficult years with her former label, saying that to come from a place where it's all about singles and chasing the next thing, she felt so grateful to be recognised. She also said hope was the album's central topic, a message she hoped reached anyone who needed it.

The win caps a remarkable turnaround. Around 2021 she publicly criticised her record label for not letting her release a studio album, before splitting from it. Her first album, My 21st Century Blues, then won her six Brit awards, still the record for a single Brits ceremony.

Who missed out

The mercury prize nominees 2026 featured several past winners and first-timers:

• •Paul McCartney, nominated for the first time for The Boys of Dungeon Lane; in a video message he said he was chuffed and surprised to be nominated alongside such a group of really amazing artists
• •Suede, winners in 1993 for their self-titled debut, lost again after opening the ceremony with Dancing With the Europeans
• •Dave, the 2019 winner for Psychodrama; he and McCartney were the only artists not to perform
• •Florence + the Machine, who now tie with Radiohead on five unconverted nominations, the most without a win
• •Olivia Dean, whose nominated album The Art of Loving has spent every one of its 55 weeks since release in the UK Top 10

Pulp, winners in 1996, performed representing the all-star compilation album Help, created to raise funds for the charity War Child, having appeared last year for their album More.

A prize under scrutiny

This was the second mercury prize Newcastle ceremony. The prize lost its sponsor in 2024, moved from London to Newcastle in 2025 and scaled up in size to the city's Utilita Arena. In its inaugural year in its new home, the Mercury went to the local artist Sam Fender. Newcastle jazz band Knats wowed the arena crowd this year with virtuosic bass soloing and spoken word poetry, but were not able to secure back-to-back Tyneside wins.

There is some consternation, though, that the prize's focus is becoming more commercial than in the past, and not distinct enough from the Brit awards. The numbers feed that debate: in 2025, seven of the 12 nominated albums reached the UK Top 3, while this year six of the nominations reached No 1.

All but two of this year's albums - Suede's Antidepressants and the Help charity compilation - were released by or in partnership with Universal, Warner or Sony, against a history of winners from the independent scene such as Arctic Monkeys, Dizzee Rascal, Sampha and Ezra Collective.

For Raye, the award marks a new peak after the singles-focused years she referenced on stage, with hope - as she said herself - the album's central topic for anyone who needed it.