The first-ever winner of Best Contemporary Country Album was announced during the 2026 Grammy Awards.
Jelly Roll took home the accolade for Beautifully Broken during the Sunday, February 1, awards show at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.
“First of all, Jesus, I hear you and I am listening, Lord. I am listening, Lord,” Jelly Roll, 41, began in his acceptance speech. “Second of all, I wanna thank my beautiful wife. I would have never changed my life without you. I would have ended up dead or in jail, I would have killed myself if it wasn’t for you. I thank you for that.”
After thanking his label, the country star shared more about the creation of Beautifully Broken.
“There was a time in my life, y’all, that I was broken. That’s why I wrote this album,” he explained. “I didn’t think I had a chance, y’all. There was days that I thought the darkest things. I was a horrible human. There was a moment in my life when all I had was a bible this big and a radio the same size in a six-by-eight-foot cell, and I believed that those two things could change my life. I believed that music had the power to change my life and God had the power to change my life, and I wanna tell y’all right now, Jesus is for everybody. Jesus is not owned by one political party. Jesus is not owned by no music label. Jesus is Jesus, and everybody can have a relationship with him.”
The other nominees in the Best Contemporary Country Album category were Kelsea Ballerini’s Patterns, Tyler Childers’ Snipe Hunter, Eric Church’s Evangeline vs. The Machine and Miranda Lambert’s Postcards From Texas.
For the first time in Grammys history, the country music album category was divided into Best Contemporary Country Album and Best Traditional Country Album this year. Charley Crockett’s Dollar a Day, Lukas Nelson’s American Romance, Willie Nelson’s Oh What a Beautiful World, Margo Price’s Hard Headed Woman and Zach Top’s Ain’t in It for My Health were nominated for Best Traditional Country Album, with Top, 28, ultimately winning the award.
The change in the country music categories came after Beyoncé won Best Country Album for Cowboy Carter in February 2025, leading critics to claim that the record did not fit the genre. (Her fellow nominees included Post Malone’s F-1 Trillion, Kacey Musgraves’ Deeper Well, Chris Stapleton’s Higher and Lainey Wilson’s Whirlwind.)
In her acceptance speech at the time, Beyoncé, 44, confessed she was “in shock” over her win.
“I’d like to thank all of the incredible country artists that accepted this album. We worked so hard on it,” she said. “I think sometimes genre is a cold word to keep us in our place as artists, and I just wanna encourage people to do what they’re passionate about and to stay persistent.”
In June 2025, the Recording Academy announced their decision to divide the country categories. While some Beyoncé fans suggested the move was made in response to her winning the Best Country Album award earlier that year, Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. claimed that the pitch was actually submitted numerous times over the years before eventually passing in 2025.
“The community of people that are making country music in all different subgenres came to us with a proposal and said, ‘We would like to have more variety in how our music is honored,’” Mason, 57, told Billboard at the time. “They said, ‘We think we need more space for our music to be celebrated and honored.’”
Mason added that the move “makes country parallel with what’s happening in other genres,” pointing to the separation of contemporary and traditional albums and performances in pop, R&B, blues and other categories.
Mason hoped that the country music world would appreciate the opportunity to honor more artists’ work.
“People from that community are making more music, it’s more varied, there’s different styles of writing and performing,” he said. “I’m hopeful that that community understands that the academy is doing what it always does, which is stay in tune with what’s happening in their genre.”
