Olivia Deen sweeps the 2026 Brit Awards, winning four awards including artist, song and album of the year | BRIT Awards

Olivia Deen was the big winner at the 2026 Brit Awards, taking home awards for Artist of the Year, Best Pop Act, Song of the Year for her Sam Fender duet Rein Me In, and Album of the Year for The Art of Loving.

In less than a year, Dean catapulted to the forefront of British pop thanks to her second album, The Art of Loving. With songs that get to the heart of the joys and frustrations of modern casual dating, they are intensely relatable, while their sophisticated and international vocals, and their ingenious styles as bossa nova, trip-hop, neo-soul and jazz come together, have given them an unusually broad and multi-generational appeal.

The 26-year-old also won one of the “Big Four” Grammy Awards this year, for Best New Artist, confirming her huge commercial success in the US and UK as well.

“This album is about love and loving each other in a world that feels loveless right now,” Dean said while accepting the Album of the Year award.

Dean won in every Brit Awards category she was nominated for, and actually beat herself to the punch in the Song of the Year category, having also been nominated for her single Man I Need, which has barely cracked the UK Top 10 since its release in August. The song category was voted for by the public via WhatsApp, as was the International Song of the Year award, which was won by Rosé and Bruno Mars for APT.

Rein Me In, a poignant song about love falling apart, was originally a Fender single included on his album People Watching, before being released as a single with a new verse from Dean: their version is now at the top of the UK Singles Chart. While Dean edged him out for Album of the Year, Fender also won the Alternative Rock category, his third win in that category after winning in 2022 and 2025 (he also won the Critics’ Choice Award in 2019).

Fender and Dean were the only multiple winners at the ceremony, which was held for the first time in Manchester at the city’s Co-op Live arena.

Returning host Jack Whitehall continued his usual routine of mocking various celebrities, describing US singer Alex Warren as “what you’d get if you asked Ed Sheeran over Timo”, saying Robbie Williams had “more bangs than his hair”, describing Shaun Ryder and the Bez as “aging like service station flowers”, and telling Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham that Brits were “the only party he’s allowed to attend these days”. A joke about Peter Mandelson being on the guest list – “No, sorry, that was another list” – was deleted by ITV from the television broadcast.

Whitehall even poked fun at another awards ceremony, promising that Brits have “the man who made the Baftas” manning the button to silence any swearing on the TV broadcast – a reference to the controversy over the N-word that accompanied British film’s biggest night last week.

Dean’s main rival was Lola Young, who also received five nominations, but was limited to one win for innovative artist. This breakthrough has happened sporadically over several years: Young was nominated for a Critics’ Choice Award in 2021 and is now on her third album. Her single “Messy”, released in May 2024, was itself a slow burn, reaching No. 1 in the UK eight months later – meaning most of the song’s success came in the Brits’ eligibility period for the year.

Dean’s supremacy also meant no awards for Lily Allen, who in another year was expected to win at least one of her three nominations, given her critically acclaimed album West End Girl and one of the most talked-about pop culture phenomenons of 2025.

Wolf Alice have won Group of the Year for the second time, having previously won in 2022 with their album The Clearing, an ambitious, stately record anchored by the soulful vocals of frontman Ellie Roussel. She dedicated the award in part to “the pubs, clubs and popular venues across the country where we literally learned to play”, acknowledging the difficulties faced by the sector. She also called for better support for artists, saying entering the music industry “shouldn’t feel like a golden ticket, but rather a viable career decision.”

Def won the hip-hop/grime/rap genre and is a clear favorite following the massive success of his album The Boy Who Played the Harp and his internationally popular UK #1 single.

Another British rapper, Skepta, shared the dance act award with producers Fred Again and PlaqueBoyMax thanks to their dubstep-leaning collaboration Victory Lap – Fred Again’s first win in the category after three previous nominations.

After losing to Ray in 2024, the spotlight-shy group, Salt, headed by producer Inflo, won the R&B award.

Relative underdogs won each of the other two international categories. Innovative Catalan pop singer Rosalía, whose album Lux was a bold coupling of neoclassical styles and avant-garde electronica, triumphed over commercial giants like Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny and Sabrina Carpenter to win international artist.

Geese, a young New York City indie rock band, beat out arena-filled acts like Haim and Tame Impala in the international band category, and their album Getting Killed blew minds with wise-beyond-their-years lyrics and imaginative arrangements.

“Free Palestine, fuck the ice,” band member Max Bassin said as part of a short acceptance speech, while Critics’ Choice Award-winner Scottish singer-songwriter Jacob Alon held aloft a keffiyeh scarf during an appearance by Sharon Osbourne, who has previously criticized pro-Palestine activists.

K-Pop was well represented: Rosé’s win for APT made her the first K-Pop Award winner in the history of the BRIT Awards, and the ceremony also marked the first K-Pop performance, with flesh-and-blood singers from the anime group Huntr/x, from the KPop movie Demon Hunters, performing their song Golden in a pre-recorded clip.

A number of award winners were named ahead of the ceremony, including the first ever Cheerleader and History Maker award: Pop singer PinkPantheress became the first female winner of the Producer of the Year award, thanks to the UK garage-influenced flashback she created for her album Fancy That. It’s another impressive achievement for the 24-year-old from Kent, whose star continues to rise: the remix of her track ‘Statesside’, featuring Zara Larsson, is currently the second most streamed song in the world on Spotify.

Noel Gallagher has been named Songwriter of the Year, following the huge cultural event that was the Oasis Meeting. He thanked his brother Liam and other band mates, saying: “They brought those songs to life. I’ll just be a singer-songwriter and nobody cares about songwriters and singers.”

Mark Ronson received the Outstanding Contribution Award, in recognition of a remarkably diverse career that has taken him from making hip-hop music with the likes of Ghostface Killah, to producing Amy Winehouse’s classic Back to Black, achieving global success with Uptown Funk, making forays into show business as duo Silk City, and overseeing the hit soundtrack to the film Barbie. Ronson was introduced by Skepta as “the nice guy in music” and a “champion of authenticity”, and paid tribute to Pinehouse, saying of his collaborators: “The music I make with Amy is the reason any of them know who I am, and that’s why I’ll always appreciate her voice, her talent and our connection.” He performed a medley of his hits with guest appearances from Ghostface Killah and Dua Lipa.

Ozzy Osbourne, who died in July 2025, received the Lifetime Achievement Award, which his wife, Sharon, accepted. She praised him as “authentic, talented, absolutely unpredictable, a wild man, a true artist… He was the most humble egomaniac you could ever meet.” The show concluded with a tribute to Robbie Williams’ No More Tears, backed by a band including Metallica’s Robert Trujillo and Ozzy guitarist Zakk Wylde.

One moment that seemed controversial, turned out to be not so. US pop singer Sombre was confronted by a man on stage and taken away by security, but the man was wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “Sombre is a homewrecker” – an apparent ploy to promote the singer’s new single Homewrecker.