Nominations for the 2026 Grammy Awards were unveiled on Friday , and as usual, the shortlists provided a mix of the expected (Kendrick Lamar, Lady Gaga and Sabrina Carpenter cleaning up in the headline categories) and the unexpected.
Surprises came in many forms: Bad Bunny made history for a second time as DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS became the second Spanish-language album in Grammys history to receive a nomination for Album of the Year – the first was his own Un Verano Sin Ti, back in 2022.
Tame Impala continued the rave reinvention documented on club-influenced new album Deadbeat with a nomination for Best Dance/Electronic Recording, after taking home the same award as a featured artist on Justice’s Neverender last year. And British artists made an even stronger showing than usual, with Lola Young and Olivia Dean deservedly earning their first ever nods in the Best New Artist category.
The nomination that we really didn’t have on our Grammys 2026 bingo card can be found in the shortlist for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical. Amid a handful of deserving but predictable inclusions – Sounwave, Dan Auerbach, Blake Mills and Cirkut – sits an artist and producer that, despite having experienced an astronomical come-up over the past few years, remains something of a newcomer to the wider industry: Dijon Duenas.
Best known as a solo artist working under his given name, Dijon records intimate and introspective alt-R&B that has grown more ambitious with each project he’s released. It was his 2021 debut album Absolutely that kickstarted his rise to Grammy recognition, a largely self-produced project recorded alongside a cast of collaborators that included man-of-the-moment Michael Gordon, AKA Mk.gee.
Dijon released BABY, the follow-up to Absolutely, earlier this year. A fragmented alloy of pop, soul and R&B framed with boldly experimental production, it couched Dijon’s’ soulful croons in glitchy textures, distorted breaks and golden age hip-hop samples, taking his already distinctive sound to new creative heights. With contributions from Mk.gee, Pino Palladino and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and Jenn Wasner, among others, it’s easily one of the year’s best albums.
Scan the rest of the Grammy nominations, though, and you won’t see a single mention of BABY. That’s because – impressive as it is – Dijon likely didn’t receive his Producer of the Year nod for that project, but his contribution to Justin Bieber’s 2025 album Swag. Dijon is credited as a writer and producer on four tracks from Bieber’s latest project, contributing to two of its biggest singles: Daisies and Yukon. Swag is up for Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album, while Yukon and Daisies received a nomination apiece.
Dijon’s’ Producer of the Year nomination is a surprise for a number of reasons. Though he’s a gifted producer, he’s best known as a solo artist: aside from Bieber’s Swag, Dijon has racked up only a handful of production credits on other artists’ work in the past. He’s not quite a producer in the sense that Rick Rubin or Greg Kurstin is a producer, a producer for hire that works with multiple artists across multiple projects.
This is the kind of producer that’s typically (though not exclusively) recognized by the Producer of the Year award. An artist can’t receive the award for self-producing their own project – the Grammy rulebook states that a producer must have worked with an artist other than themselves to be eligible.
The rules also encourage those submitting a producer for consideration to include a “body of work” of up to nine projects. This brings us to our second reason: in the window of eligibility for the 2026 Grammys, Dijon released his own album, contributed production to a few tracks from Swag and its double album sequel – and that’s it. Usually, a nominee will have contributed to at least two projects with other artists, and often more.
If Dijon wins Producer of the Year, he’ll join an exclusive club of artist-producers that have taken home the award despite being best known for their own work. Since the turn of the millennium, only Dr. Dre and Pharrell Williams have managed it – prior to that, only Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson. Other artist-producers nominated for Producer of the Year in the past include Kanye West, Prince, Paul Simon and Lionel Richie.
A win for Dijon would be quite the coup, but he’s up against some stiff competition, established contenders with mountains of records under their belts. Dan Auerbach, who launched his career as frontman for The Black Keys but has since become an in-demand rock producer, already won the award in 2013 and has received three nominations since then. Hip-hop mainstay Sounwave – who worked on Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy-sweeping 2024 hit Not Like Us – is under consideration for his contributions to Lamar’s GNX and Doja Cat’s Vie, two of the year’s biggest releases.
Guitar-wielding Californian Blake Mills (also a solo artist, though he’s an established producer too) is up for the award for the third time, and also received a nod for Best Engineered Album thanks to his work on Japanese Breakfast’s For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women). Cirkut, a Canadian producer and Max Martin affiliate with a star-studded discography, has been involved with several projects nominated across multiple categories this year, including Lady Gaga’s Mayhem and Bruno Mars and Rosé’s Apt.
Often accused of being a popularity contest, the Grammys rarely reward innovation, originality and flair. That’s something that Dijon has by the bucketload, a precious resource that shaped the sound of one of this year’s standout releases and pushed Bieber to create some of the most mature and compelling music of his career. It might be a long shot, but we can’t help but root for the underdog.
