Borderline won a special award at the 2026 Aotearoa Music Awards.
The up-and-coming band won the JD Sports Tā te Iwi | People’s Choice award, which was decided entirely by public vote.
Borderline follow metal-meets-rock outfit Devilskin in winning the award.
Borderline’s big win comes ahead of their recently announced ANZ tour, which will take them to Auckland, Hamilton, Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne this July.
Borderline’s tour news followed the announcement of their highly anticipated debut album.
The self-titled record will arrive on June 26th via EMPIRE, and will feature recent singles “Terrify”, “Tainted”, and “Watching It Burn”.
“We are beyond excited to take the album out on the road,” Borderline said. “Ever since we first wrote these songs we’ve been imagining playing them live, and really can’t wait for people to experience it in person.
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“There’s so many fun moments in the show that we hope people will love, and we’re really happy to be touring it for the first time at home here in New Zealand and then over to Australia — it feels very special to us.”
The album is “the sum of every single corner of musical inspiration from all four of us,” according to the band, shaped through home studio sessions, late nights, and time spent in Roundhead’s Brick Room experimenting with vintage synths and guitars.
Borderline are in our Future of Music 2026 series, chosen as one of 25 ANZ acts we think are destined for the very top.
“Borderline are arriving at their debut album with the momentum of a band who have grown up in public but never lost the spark that made them start out in the first place,” we wrote about the band.
“For a band still only at the beginning of their first album cycle, Borderline already sound like they are thinking bigger, with sharper songs, bolder production, and the kind of live ambition that makes the next step feel inevitable.”
