The Recording Academy has revealed the 2026 Lifetime Achievement Award recipients.
Carlos Santana, Chaka Khan, Cher, Fela Kuti, Paul Simon, and Whitney Houston are the Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Award honorees.
Bernie Taupin, Eddie Palmieri and Sylvia Rhone are the Trustees Award honorees; and John Chowning is the Technical Grammy Award honoree.
The Recording Academy's Special Merit Awards Ceremony celebrating the 2026 Lifetime Achievement Award, Trustee Award and Technical Grammy Award recipients will be held on January 31, 2026, at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre.
The Grammy Week event will celebrate the honorees' outstanding contributions to the recording field.
The Lifetime Achievement Award is presented by vote of the Recording Academy's National Trustees to performers who, during their lifetime, have made creative contributions of outstanding artistic significance to the field of recording. See past recipients here (*through 1972, recipients included non-performers).
For over five decades, Carlos Santana has been a pioneering force in music, fusing Afro-Latin, blues, rock, and jazz into a sound that transcends genre, culture and generation.
Chaka Khan is one of the most transformative vocal artists of the last five decades, a 10-time Grammy winner, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee and a creative innovator whose influence reaches across pop, R&B, jazz, rock, country, gospel, dance, classical, indie, and beyond.
For nearly 50 years, Cher has remained one of the world's most enduring entertainers, with a career spanning music, film and television.
Fela Kuti was a Nigerian musician, producer, arranger, political radical, outlaw, and the father of Afrobeat.
Songwriter, recording artist, performer, and philanthropist Paul Simon has shaped the sound of modern music across seven decades with classics like 'Bridge Over Troubled Water,' 'The Sound of Silence' and his album Graceland.
Whitney Houston, renowned worldwide as "The Voice," was a record-breaking vocalist whose unparalleled talent and more than 220 million records sold made her one of the most celebrated artists in music history.
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