Who Will Win The Grammy For Best Americana Album?
The Grammy Awards recognize and celebrate musical artists from all over the world, but there’s one rather recently established category that’s fairly specific to the Recording Academy’s native country. The Grammy Award for Best Americana Album honors works of Americana, a genre that is related to country, folk, bluegrass, and gospel music, containing influences from diverse American musical backgrounds. Americana’s variety of inspirations is reflected in the diversity of the genres that this year’s nominated musicians represent.
Jon Batiste – Big Money
Big Money was released in August of 2025 by Jon Batiste, whose work has included elements of jazz, soul, blues, funk, hip-hop, and classical music, among other genres. It is his ninth studio album. Batiste is a very seasoned Grammy veteran, having received 25 nominations beginning in 2018 (though his career began two decades earlier) and winning seven of them.
Batiste is also notable for contributing his musical talents to the big screen: one of his Grammys honors his work on the soundtrack of the Pixar film “Soul” (for which he also won an Oscar), while two more are for the biographical documentary “American Symphony,” in which he stars. This year, he’s also nominated for Best American Roots Performance (for Big Money’s “Lonely Avenue,” which has a guest appearance by another Pixar musical icon, Randy Newman) and Best American Roots Song (for the title track of Big Money).
Larkin Poe – Bloom
Bloom, released in January of last year, is the eighth studio album by Larkin Poe, a Nashville-based rock band consisting of the sisters Rebecca and Megan Lovell. In a career of a decade and a half, this band has received three Grammy nominations, winning one of them in 2024: Best Contemporary Blues Album, for Blood Harmony. (Their first nomination, at the 64th Grammys, was in the same category for Venom & Faith). This year’s nod is their first one in the Best Americana Album category.
Willie Nelson – Last Leaf on the Tree
At the age of 92, country-music legend Willie Nelson still devotedly continues his career of now more than six decades. Last Leaf on the Tree, released in November of 2024, is his seventy-sixth solo studio album, and its nomination is among the most recent of his 59 nods (his career is nearly as old as the Grammys themselves, which first took notice of him in 1975). However, it’s only his second nomination in this category, the first being for 2009’s Willie and the Wheel (so named because he shares it with Asleep at the Wheel). This year, he is also nominated for Best Traditional Country Album on account of his Oh What a Beautiful World.
Molly Tuttle – So Long Little Miss Sunshine
Molly Tuttle, a country and Americana musician whose work is known for its bluegrass influences, is a two-time Grammy winner, in both cases for Best Bluegrass Album. She has also been nominated for Best New Artist (in 2023), and this year, her song “That’s Gonna Leave a Mark” from So Long Little Miss Sunshine (which is her fifth studio album, released in August of 2025) has gotten her a nomination for Best Americana Performance.
Jesse Welles – Middle
Closing out this list is a first-time nominee who is up for four Grammys this year. Jesse Welles, whose career goes back to 2012, released eight studio albums under the name Jeh Sea Wells, then five more as simply Welles. In 2024, he began using the name Jesse Welles. His number of nominations this year is hardly surprising when one considers that Middle, released in February of last year, is only the third of eight albums that he has made as Jesse Welles. Under the Powerlines (April 24 – September 24) is up for Best Folk Album, and the songs “Horses” and “Middle” from Middle have gotten him nods for Best Americana Performance and Best American Roots Song, respectively.
Brief Scoop on This Year’s Grammys
The 68th Grammys will be held at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. They will air live on CBS between 5:00 and 8:30 PM (PST), and they will stream on Paramount+. Their host will be Trevor Noah.
