2026 Aotearoa Music Awards: The Best and Worst Moments

This year’s AMA was dominated by Māori artists, led from the front by the all-conquering Marlon Williams and his first fully te reo album, Te Whare Tīwekaweka.

Accompanying wins in the primarily te reo Māori categories, Te Māngai Pāho Mana Reo (Stan Walker for “Mō Āke Tonu”, his collaboration with Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke) and Te Māngai Pāho Te Manu Taki Māori o te Tau | Best Māori Artist (TAWAZ), Māori artists emerged triumphant elsewhere in most of the main categories.

Exciting newcomer Te Wehi, who has enjoyed a stellar 12 months on the Aotearoa Charts, at one stage holding six of the top 20 positions on the Official Top 20 Aotearoa Singles Chart, capped his breakout year with a win in the Breakthrough Artist of the Year category. Te Wehi also opened the ceremony on the night.

Best Hip Hop Artist, meanwhile, went to Rolling Stone AU/NZ favourites MOKOMOKAI, whose excellent PONO! album found the trio embracing the complexity of being Māori. Read our 2025 interview with MOKOMOKAI here.

MĀ — aka Te Whanganui-a-Tara musician Maarire Brunning-Kouka — won Best Alternative Artist for her wonderful latest album, Blame it on the Weather. She also gave one of the best performances of the night inside the Civic.

Despite facing tough competition from Dick Move and Beastwars, Māori metal trio Alien Weaponry won Best Rock / Metal Artist for Te Rā, their third studio album. Read our interview with Alien Weaponry, in which they discussed their pride at taking Māori culture to the rest of the world through their music.

It’s far from a flash in the pan, though. As Williams said during one of his many speeches last night, “This is not Māori music having its day, this is just a day of Māori music.”

First, a caveat: Tami Neilson is a wonderful artist, one we’ve supported at Rolling Stone AU/NZ for several years. Same goes for Kaylee Bell. But the pair sharing the Best Country Music Artist award for five years now, after Neilson’s win last night, has left the category feeling stale.

As we noted in our 2026 AMA predictions, Jenny Mitchell’s beautiful Forest House would have been a worthy alternative winner; Neilson even suggested she hoped that Mitchell would win in her own speech.

Neilson and Bell are two of the most consistent musicians in the game, so they’ll likely be in the running for Best Country Music Artist for many more years to come (and deservedly so). But please, voters, give someone else a chance!

As we wrote earlier this year, Caru and Brandn Shiraz’s 2026 AMA nomination was a bloody nice surprise.

Two of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland’s hardest-working and coolest underground musicians combined to thrilling effect on Back 2 Back, a joint effort fuelled by their love of the timeless sounds of UKG, last year.

Back 2 Back was the sound of two musicians trusting each other’s instincts, growing into the perfect producer and MC pairing.

Although we predicted the equally excellent Geneva AM to win Best Electronic Artist over Caru and Brandn, it was impossible to not feel happy for the duo once their names were announced.

Caru collected their award alone at first, with Brandn nowhere to be seen, before the rapper sprinted down the Civic aisle like a surprise WWE wrestler heading to the ring to join his mate. Their genuine shock and joy at winning was infectious, and the pair gave one of the most pleasingly unvarnished speeches of the night.

Read our 2025 interview with Caru and Brandn here.

Look, co-hosting an awards show is a terribly tricky job. Look, Tom Sainsbury is a very fine comedian — both my mum and my partner’s mum have sent me his funny clips. But the lack of chemistry between Sainsbury and Kara Rickard was painfully palpable.

While RNZ host Rickard remained a consummate professional throughout, calmly navigating the night with seeming ease, but Sainsbury appeared a little out of his depth, flinging groan-inducing jokes at the front rows time and again. Someone with more musical nous, or stronger broadcasting experience, might have been a better foil for Rickard.

We’ve already given Marlon Williams his flowers for Te Whare Tīwekaweka (more on that below), and it was the turn of the New Zealand music industry to do likewise last night.

After dominating the nominations in April, Williams once again led the way at the Auckland ceremony with three wins.

Thanks to the deeply personal Te Whare Tīwekaweka, his first fully te reo Māori album, Williams won Album of the Year, Single of the Year, and Best Solo Artist, while Mark Perkins also won Best Engineer for his work on the record.

Williams was present at tonight’s ceremony to collect his multiple awards. For the big one, Album of the Year, he was welcomed to the stage by a Kapa haka, appearing visibly emotional as it was performed.

“I’m absolutely humbled by what a beautiful night that it’s been,” Williams said at the start of his Album of the Year speech.

“Didn’t expect all of this, but here we are,” he added, before welcoming his band, the Yarra Benders, onto the stage with him to receive their own flowers.

Te Whare Tīwekaweka topped our Best New Zealand Albums of 2025 list, seeing off strong competition from albums by Geneva AM, The Beths, Theia, and many more.

The album also made it into our Best New Zealand Album of the 2020s So Far list in the middle of last year. “Perhaps recency bias is a factor, but Marlon Williams’ most personal release to date already feels like an Aotearoa classic,” we wrote.

“Te Whare Tīwekaweka is the album we’ve all been waiting for from Marlon Williams — a stunning ode to love, life, and connection, sung entirely in te reo Māori,”our album review read.

On a night when so many of the best speeches were political in nature, and on a day when the NZ Government unveiled its new “tough love’ budget, it was disappointing that the most overtly political band on show didn’t get recognised with any awards.

Dick Move, with lead singer Lucy Suttor sporting a Socialist Aotearoa t-shirt, put on a hell of a performance during the ceremony, but they missed out on the Album of the Year and Best Rock / Metal Artist gongs.

With rock and metal perhaps unfairly considered in one category, voters were always going to have a difficult time choosing between bands from the different genres.

And while Beastwars and Alien Weaponry’s latest albums were typically strong, Dream, Believe, Achieve, Dick Move’s third album, was by far the standout of the three.

A few months out from the election, the AMA honouring a punk album that doesn’t hide its politics in such a confrontational manner would have been a nice thing to see.

He’s been here before, inducted with Supergroove in 2014, but that didn’t make Ché Fu’s second induction into the Te Whare Taonga Puoro o Aotearoa | New Zealand Music Hall of Fame any less sweet.

The Aotearoa hip-hop legend was officially inducted at last night’s ceremony, with Betty-Anne Hall on hand to honour him.

The ceremony closed with a special live medley performance by Ché and his band The Kratez, featuring some of his most iconic songs.

It was the ideal time for Ché’s Hall of Fame induction, with his second album, Navigator, celebrating its 25th birthday this year. A limited edition 25th anniversary silver vinyl reissue of Navigator was released earlier this month.

To celebrate Navigator turning 25 as well as his Hall of Fame induction, we took a closer look at Ché platinum-selling record in a special Deep Dive feature.

“Ché was already beloved. In the wake of Navigator, he became a generation-defining superstar without ever losing his love for the people. From the lush, opening flourishes of ‘Misty Frequencies’, the album reveals itself as a treasure trove of musical riches,” journalist Martyn Pepperell wrote. 

Read the full feature here.

It’s no secret that Geneva AM is well-liked at Rolling Stone AU/NZ.

We ranked her stunning debut album Pikipiki in the top 5 of our year-end best New Zealand albums list, just a few places behind Marlon Williams and Te Whare Tīwekaweka, and we seriously considered putting it at No. 1 at the time.

Geneva AM — aka Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland producer and artist Geneva Alexander-Marsters — subsequently featured in our Future of Music 2026 series, chosen as one of 25 ANZ acts we’re most excited about for the years ahead. She’s that talented.

So, heading into the 2026 AMA, and especially after she won Best Independent Debut at the Taite Music Prize, we thought her chances of a win were strong.

Pushing Williams in the main Album of the Year category was always going to be a tough task, but we predicted that Best Electronic Artist would go Geneva’s way.

And although Caru and Brandn Shiraz were exciting winners in the latter category (more on that above), Geneva missing out last night felt like an oversight by AMA voters for what is a truly special album.

The crowd reaction whenever her name was mentioned inside the Civic last night hinted at her popularity in the industry too.

There are some speeches you watch in real time and just know that they’re going to be talked about for years to come.

That happened last night when Dame Lynda Topp delivered one of the most powerful and emotional speeches the Aotearoa Music Awards have ever seen.

Last weekend, Dame Jools, Lynda’s twin sister, passed away after a battle with breast cancer. As per RNZ, Lynda revealed that Jools left behind a letter that asked her: “If you get a chance Lynda, could you thank New Zealand for me?”

Lynda got her chance — and then some — at last night’s AMA ceremony.

“It’s going to be hard to say a few words to you all,” Lynda said at first, bravely fighting back tears, but she quickly found her voice.

“I performed with my sister for over 40 years. Being a twin is such a beautiful thing to be. Not once in that 40 years did we ever rehearse,” she said to laughter from the crowd.

Lynda soon had the crowd on its feet.

“We need support for artists in this country. We need a government that says the arts is more important than a defence budget! Way more!” she shouted to roars of approval.

“I see young artists struggling, not because they’ve got a gig on Friday night, but because they’re trying to put some sort of crazy… arts submission to get a few lousy dollars from the government,” she said. “This is not fair, it’s not fair.

“We are not defined by a government, we are not defined by politicians, we are defined by people and our culture and our art.”

Lynda then singled out Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Paul Goldsmith, who was reportedly at the ceremony.

“I’d like you to take a message back to Wellington. I did a speed read on the Budget this afternoon, [and] there doesn’t appear to be any money for music, but in big, big letters in the top of the news — $2.1 billion for defence. What the f***?” she said pointedly.

Would Lynda be worried if Aotearoa was ever invaded? Probably not.

“If you give it [the defence spending] to us, you put Alien Weaponry up the front, and you put Dick Move right beside ’em, and you put Hori Shaw on a horse and behind them, and I’m going to be at the top of the hill. Ain’t nobody going to get through us, baby,” she said.

Lynda ended, of course, with another mention of her late, great sister.

“Tonight in honour of my beautiful twin sister, who I will never ever stop missing, be strong, never give up, play your instrument loud and sing at the top of your lungs and remember that music makes us human,” she told the crowd.

In 2008, Lynda and Jools were inducted into the New Zealand Music Hall of Fame. Earlier this month, they received the 2026 Country Music Honours for Contribution to New Zealand Country Music.

Yes, I know that I keep banging on about Ōtepoti Dunedin. Yes, I know that the Aotearoa Music Awards have always been comically Auckland-centric. But it still felt like a shame that one of the best years for Dunedin music wasn’t recognised at New Zealand music’s biggest night.

After discussing the snubbing of the city’s incredible current generation before the ceremony, one dour old git commented, “Have you confirmed that the ‘snubbed’ releases were actually entered in the categories mentioned? Obviously if an artist decides not to enter, it’s not really a ‘snub’ that they aren’t finalists is it?”

His anal comment completely missed the point, attempting to get off on a technicality.

Why aren’t Dunedin musicians being recognised? Can they afford to enter the AMA in the first place, during a tough cost-of-living crisis? Is the city’s music community too jaded from not being recognised in the past? It’s probably a little from column A, a little from column B, but whatever it is, bands like Dale Kerrigan, Pearly* (who had to make do with featuring in our Future of Music 2026 series), and IVY should be getting recognised on a wider national scale.

By our count, just three of this year’s nominees in the main (non-artisan) categories were associated with Dunedin*: Nadia Reid, up for Best Folk Artist, and Michael Norris and Anthony Ritchie, both up for Best Classical Artist)

2025 felt like the best year for Dunedin music in a generation — some national recognition during awards season (none of the 10 nominees for this year’s Taite Music Prize were from Dunedin, either) would have been well deserved.

*Either originally from or currently based in the city

Stepping up to receive the Best Soul/R&B Artist award for ANITYA, Tom Scott appeared to be the most relaxed person in the room.

“This is proof that men will make an R&B album before going to therapy,” he joked to much laughter from the crowd. “Next toxic relationship I’m in, I’m going to be like ‘I did the work, I made an R&B album about my divorce,’ so that’s me, I’m healed now.”

Scott continued by thanking the women in his life, including his mother and Lorraine Barry.

Te Wehi, who shot to prominence with a sensational chart run over the past 12 months, had to step onto the stage to collect not one but two awards — for Breakthrough Artist of the Year and Best Roots Artist — and each time he seemed endearingly dazed by the experience.

I mean this as a sincere compliment: Te Wehi’s lack of media training was a delight. He overcame his nerves to genially banter with Rickard and the crowd, taking time to shout out Hori Shaw and thank his wife and his mum.

Don’t ever change, Te Wehi.

Let’s end on a positive note with a bonus ‘best’ moment.

Where to begin, really? Tom Scott bringing out Geneva AM for a surprise duet; MĀ’s incredible charisma and flow; Alien Weaponry’s thrashing metal energy; Dick Move bringing a touch of Whammy Bar to the Civic Theatre; the Kapa haka that welcomed Marlon Williams onto the stage to collect his final award of the night.

The list could go on and on.