December 23, 2025
The Special Merit Awards Ceremony will happen on the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles as a part of the Grammy Week.
The Recording Academy has named music legends Whitney Houston and Chaka Khan amongst this 12 months’s recipients of the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
The Lifetime Achievement Award is among the 2026 Special Merit Awards that the Recording Academy will current throughout Grammy Week on Jan. 31, 2026, forward of the 68th Annual Grammy Awards scheduled for Feb. 1 in Los Angeles.
Houston, who died in 2012, is being acknowledged posthumously for her influential profession, throughout which she bought greater than 200 million information worldwide and achieved a number of chart-topping hits that helped form pop and R&B music.
The Recording Academy acknowledged her in its press launch, stating that she was a record-breaking vocalist whose expertise and greater than 220 million information bought made her one of the crucial celebrated artists in music historical past.
Chaka Khan, a 10-time Grammy winner whose profession spans more than five decades, will even be honored. She is broadly credited with mixing R&B, funk, soul, and jazz throughout her work with Rufus and as a solo artist, with hits resembling “I Feel For You” and “Ain’t Nobody.”
“She is a trailblazer, storyteller and the voice of energy and freedom for a lot of generations. Her stay performances are nothing wanting electrifying. Chaka Khan stays a dwelling pressure in music – an artist whose work and life proceed to encourage, elevate and redefine what is feasible,” mentioned the assertion.
Honorees are chosen for his or her “artistic contributions of excellent creative significance to the sphere of recording,” the Academy mentioned in a press launch.
In addition to Houston and Khan, the complete roster of Lifetime Achievement honorees for 2026 consists of Paul Simon, Cher, Carlos Santana, and Fela Kuti, the Academy mentioned in its announcement. The awards celebration will even honor different music figures with Trustees Awards and a Technical Grammy Award on the Special Merit Awards Ceremony.
Recording Academy CEO, Harvey Mason Jr., mentioned within the press launch that the group of recipients represents “a rare group whose affect spans generations, genres and the very basis of recent music.”
The Special Merit Awards Ceremony will happen on the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles as a part of the Grammy Week festivities main as much as the primary televised Grammy Awards occasion.
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