In February 2026, Tyla won Best African Music Performance again, while Nigerian nominees missed out. The result quickly revived familiar calls for a separate Afrobeats category and questions about whether Nigerian artists have enough campaign support in the United States. Those are legitimate debates, but neither the result nor the public discussion tells us exactly how voters made their choices.
The Results Since 2024
Tyla’s Push 2 Start beat three Nigerian entries — Burna Boy‘s Love, Davido and Omah Lay‘s With You, and Ayra Starr and Wizkid‘s Gimme Dat — as well as Uganda’s Eddy Kenzo and Mehran Matin’s Hope & Love, to win Best African Music Performance at the 68th Grammys held at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.
This was not a one-off. In 2024, Tyla Seethal won the same award with Water, becoming the inaugural winner of the category. In 2025, Tems broke the streak with Love Me JeJe, the only time a Nigerian artist has won since the category was created. Then 2026 came around and Tyla won again.
Since Best African Music Performance was introduced, South African artist Tyla has won twice and Nigerian artist Tems once. That record is worth discussing, but it does not establish that nationality or campaign infrastructure alone explains any individual result.
Damini Ogulu, known as Burna Boy, had 13 Grammy nominations and one win as of the 2026 ceremony. His win was for Twice as Tall, which took Best Global Music Album in 2021, before the Best African Music Performance category existed. Ayodeji Balogun, known as Wizkid, has one Grammy win for his feature on Beyoncé‘s Brown Skin Girl. David Adeleke, known as Davido, founder of DMW known as Davido Music Worldwide has been nominated multiple times. Temilade Openiyi, known as Tems, has two Grammy wins and is the most decorated Nigerian artist in Grammy history.
Talent matters, but it cannot answer every question this debate raises about category design, campaign visibility and what a Grammy is meant to recognise.
Who Actually Votes, and What They Hear
The Recording Academy has a large voting membership, and Grammy voters ultimately decide among the recordings and performances presented in each category. Campaigning and industry access can shape how prominently a release is presented during awards season, but the public record does not let us reduce an individual result to label promotion alone.
Tyla is signed to Epic Records, part of Sony Music. Major labels can draw on awards-season staff, trade advertising, industry relationships and listening events to keep a release visible. That infrastructure can help a campaign reach voters, but its presence alone does not tell us how voters weighed the music or why a particular recording won.
Burna Boy is on Atlantic Records, while Tems is signed through RCA Records. Both have won Grammys, which makes major-label infrastructure relevant to the conversation. It does not, by itself, prove that label structure explains their wins; the recordings, category fit and voting also matter.
Some Nigerian artists enter Grammy season without the US-based campaign teams and industry relationships available to major-label acts. That can make it harder to keep a release visible during awards season, even when the artist already has a large audience. But a nomination-to-win gap is not enough, on its own, to show that campaigning explains the outcome; the public record does not disclose how individual voters made their choices.
The Category Is Doing More Work Than the Name Suggests
Best African Music Performance brings recordings from across the continent into a single category. Artists from Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Senegal, Ethiopia and Kenya may be considered for the same award, despite working in different musical traditions and markets. The category is African, not Afrobeats-specific, so it places a wide range of sounds in competition with one another.
Tyla‘s music draws on South African pop and amapiano alongside R&B influences. Her win is not evidence that Nigerian artists were overlooked simply because she is South African; the category is designed to cover music from across the continent. The more useful debate is whether one award can fairly represent scenes with different sounds, markets and industry histories—and whether a narrower Afrobeats category would solve more problems than it creates.
Nigerian artists helped create the global market that made the category possible, but the category is deliberately broad enough to include music from across the continent. The recurring Nigerian concern is therefore less about one artist being displaced and more about whether the current category captures the distinctions the industry itself cares about.
Afro Nation, AFRIMA and The Headies serve different purposes, from live performance and regional recognition to celebrating African music on its own terms. Their existence does not prove that the Grammys are incapable of recognising African artists, but it does show that one international award cannot meet every need for visibility, context and industry recognition. The claim that campaign infrastructure determines the outcome would require evidence beyond the winners list.
Fela’s Award Says More About the Institution Than the Category
During Grammy Week in 2026, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award at the Recording Academy’s Special Merit Awards ceremony, held the day before the main Grammys. Fela died in 1997, and his daughter Yeni Kuti accepted the award on behalf of the family. The recognition was historic for an African artist.
Fela was never nominated for a Grammy during his lifetime, despite his influence on music in Nigeria and internationally. The award came 29 years after his death, a reminder that institutional recognition can lag behind an artist’s cultural impact.
The timing of Fela’s award illustrates the limits of using a single awards body as a complete measure of cultural importance. A Grammy can confer valuable industry recognition, but it cannot determine the size or significance of an artist’s catalogue.
What Would Actually Change the Odds
Label infrastructure can matter during awards season because established campaigns have people, relationships and budgets dedicated to getting releases heard by industry voters. For Nigerian artists seeking Grammy recognition, stronger international representation may therefore help. It is not a guarantee of a win, and it is not the only route to recognition.
Burna Boy has released music through Atlantic, and Tems through RCA; both have won Grammys. Those examples make international label support relevant to the discussion, but they do not establish that independent artists or acts on smaller deals are less likely to win. To make that case properly, we would need a broader comparison of nominees, campaign support and outcomes over time.
A separate Afrobeats category is one proposed response, and Nigerian industry figures have argued for it. Whether that would be better than the current pan-African category is ultimately a question for the Recording Academy and the artists it represents. The useful point for this debate is that different African scenes do not share the same commercial histories, sounds or infrastructure simply because they sit under one geographic label.
The Bigger Question Is Whether Nigeria Still Needs the Prize
Seyi Vibez has never been nominated for a Grammy. Spotify’s 2025 Nigeria year-end rankings placed him second among the country’s most-streamed artists, while Asake had three projects in the Nigerian Spotify top ten. Neither had a Grammy nomination to match that streaming performance. Their careers are a reminder that an awards record and an audience are two different measures of success.
It is worth being clear about what a Grammy win is expected to do for an artist.
A Grammy can help with recognition in the United States and may support efforts to reach mainstream radio and industry partners. That is part of the crossover strategy Burna Boy has pursued with Atlantic. But a win does not automatically deliver radio play or a larger audience; those outcomes depend on the music, promotion and relationships built after awards night.
For a Nigerian fan who buys a ticket to Davido’s 5ive Alive Tour and sings along at Godswill Akpabio International Stadium in Uyo, the Grammy result in Los Angeles may have little bearing on how they feel about the music. The award can matter to an artist’s international ambitions without being the main measure of success at home.
Better international campaign support could help Nigerian artists get heard by voters, and a separate Afrobeats category is another option to consider. Neither would guarantee a win. A Grammy matters, but so do the audience, the touring business and the career an artist builds beyond awards season.
OBO performs at Coachella in April 2026 as the only Afrobeats artist on the lineup. Burna Boy has toured arenas across three continents, while Tems has won two Grammys. Ayra Starr, signed to Mavin Records under Don Jazzy, is building an international career of her own. These milestones tell us more about the reach of Nigerian artists than a prediction about who will win an award next.
Representation, campaign resources and the breadth of the pan-African category are worth debating beyond awards week. But the Grammy should not become the only measure of how Nigerian music is doing.