SIQA AI Music Awards 2026 nominees: the full list across 25 categories, led by Ava Bently, with Xania Monet, Solomon Ray and Aria Blu

Ava Bently has 6 nominations at the first SIQA AI Music Awards, more than any other act. Xania Monet, Slime Dot and Proph3ci are right behind her with 5 each.

SIQA, the Sonic Intelligence Academy behind the AI music charts, has named the nominees in all 25 categories: 125 nominations, shared by 72 acts. The winners are named on November 12 and 13, 2026 in Los Angeles, with the main show at The Mayan on November 13.

Every category is below as a slider, with the cover art, a still from the video or a photo of the artist. Swipe or use the arrows to see all 5 nominees. If a nominee already has a profile in my Artist Index, the card links straight to it.

Who leads the SIQA AI Music Awards 2026 nominations

Ava Bently is nominated for AI Artist of the Year, AI Producer of the Year, Best AI Collab, Best Human+AI Hybrid Song, Best AI Country Song and Best AI Country Artist.

The Hybrid one tells you how she works. In the SIQA Verified Registry, Ava Bently registers most of her songs as Human + AI Hybrid. That’s SIQA’s label for an artist who clones their own voice, so the vocal is AI-generated but the voice is hers.

Here’s the rest of the top of the field:

• Xania Monet has 5 nominations, including AI Song of the Year for “How Was I Supposed To Know?”. She also got SIQA’s first AI artist plaque in June.
• Slime Dot has 5, including AI Album of the Year for “The Happening” and both hip-hop awards.
• Proph3ci has 5, and “God Kept His Word” is nominated twice, for Best AI-Assisted Song and Best AI Gospel Song.
• Aria Blu, DJ Shawn Q and VANYRA X have 4 each.

Two things jump out at me.

Gospel reaches way past its own categories. Aria Blu’s “God Don’t Play About Me” is up for AI Song of the Year, and gospel acts like Proph3ci, DJ Shawn Q and Solomon Ray pick up nominations outside the gospel categories too. That matches the chart: in SIQA’s Q1 2026 report, gospel was 8.7% of submissions but held 21.2% of chart positions, and by mid-year it was the fastest-growing genre in AI music.

Hip-hop is the surprise. The same Q1 report had hip-hop at 10.9% of submissions and only 1% of chart slots, and Slime Dot still picked up 5 nominations.

Nominees who already have a profile in my Artist Index show up with teal names on the cards, so you can click straight through. Now, the full list.

SIQA AI Music Awards 2026 General Field nominees

These are the 4 biggest awards of the night. AI Song of the Year is the last trophy handed out on November 13.

AI Song of the Year nominees

AI Artist of the Year nominees

AI Album of the Year nominees

AI Producer of the Year nominees

SIQA AI Music Awards 2026 artist and performance nominees

This group covers Best AI Group, Best AI Music Video and Best AI Collab. For the music video award, the cards show a still from each video instead of the cover.

Best AI Group nominees

Best AI Music Video nominees

Best AI Collab nominees

SIQA AI Music Awards 2026 classification nominees

These 2 awards come straight from the SIQA classification framework, the label every song on the SIQA chart carries.

AI-Assisted means a human did at least one core creative job, like writing the lyrics or singing, and AI did the rest. Human + AI Hybrid means the artist cloned their own voice, so the vocal is AI-generated but the voice is theirs. The third tier, Fully AI-Generated, doesn’t get an award of its own.

Best AI-Assisted Song nominees

Best Human+AI Hybrid Song nominees

SIQA AI Music Awards 2026 genre song nominees

There are 10 genre song awards, and they run from R&B and country to comedy and musical theatre. Keep an eye on gospel: 4 of its 5 song nominees also show up in categories outside gospel.

Best AI R&B Song nominees

Best AI Country Song nominees

Best AI Gospel Song nominees

Best AI Pop Song nominees

Best AI Rock/Alt Song nominees

Best AI Hip-Hop Song nominees

Best AI International Song nominees

Best AI Comedic Song nominees

Best AI Musical Theatre Song nominees

Best AI Jazz Song nominees

SIQA AI Music Awards 2026 genre artist nominees

There are 6 genre artist awards, and VANYRA X is the only act nominated in 2 of them: Pop and Rock/Alt.

Best AI R&B Artist nominees

Best AI Country Artist nominees

Best AI Gospel Artist nominees

Best AI Pop Artist nominees

Best AI Rock/Alt Artist nominees

Best AI Hip-Hop Artist nominees

How SIQA picked the AI Music Awards 2026 nominees

Nominations opened on August 31, 2026 and closed on September 25. Only artists with a verified profile in the SIQA Verified Registry could enter, and every song, video and collab entry had to point to a track with a verified classification.

SIQA says it got more than 2,000 submissions. Its published review criteria explain how that got cut down:

• The work has to be out on at least one major streaming or distribution platform, with the credits and the AI-use disclosure filled in.
• Each artist gets 1 entry per category, and a misfiled entry gets moved to the right category instead of thrown out.
• In any category with more than 20 eligible entries, the review team builds a shortlist of 20, judged on craft, creative use of AI, originality and category fit.
• For the artist awards and the Of the Year awards, SIQA also weighs each artist’s engagement across platforms between August 1, 2025 and June 30, 2026.

From those shortlists, the verified artists in the registry voted the 5 nominees per category, and the same members vote for the winners. According to awards.thesiqa.com, nobody can vote for their own work.

When the SIQA AI Music Awards 2026 winners are announced

The trophies go out over 2 days in Los Angeles. The first ones are handed out at the Premiere Ceremony during the SIQA Summit on November 12. On November 13 at The Mayan, 13 awards are presented on stage, building up to AI Song of the Year, and SIQA streams the whole ceremony worldwide.

2 more trophies sit outside this list: the SIQA Visionary Award and the Off the Charts Spotlight Award, which is the only one the public votes on.

I sit on SIQA’s Creative Advisory Council, and I’ll be in the room for both days. Once the winners are out, I’ll mark every one of them on the cards above, so bookmark this page and check back on November 14.