This year, all the web content for the NMG Awards 2026 will be hosted on this website.
AUDIENCE VOTE HERE
Allow us to tell you how the NMG Awards nominees list is created.
The nominations list.
First, an artist must be primarily based in East Anglia. By that, we include Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire or Bedfordshire
This artist must have had more than 1 new and original track featured by NMG (by Tim Willett, Ned Newman and/or Tom Dunleavy) between 1st September 2025 and 31st May 2026.
Covers or re-releases are not eligible. Any artist which is not currently active or who has disbanded in this period are also not eligible. Some artists may not be included on this list at their request.
The number of artists we feature is huge and too many to include on the initial nominations list for the NMG Awards so a shortlisting process happened to bring the first round down to approximately 150 nominees under this criteria.
For any queries regarding this process, please contact [email protected]
What happens next?
Nominated artists are contacted by email and invited to submit up to 2 tracks for the judging panel to listen to. They have approx a fortnight to do this and any artists who choose not to submit / miss the deadline will not be eligible to win an award in any category thereafter. The deadline for this process was 10th August.
The judging panel is made up of well known names from the music scene in East Anglia. Most categories are 100% decided by the panel. The New Band category will be judged both by public and judge vote. Audience Choice (as the name suggests) is purely a public vote.
Any artist who had submitted tracks to be judged is eligible to win and invited to attend the ceremony at The Apex on 11th September 2026.
The 2025 categories are:
Female Solo
Male Solo
18 & Under
Alternative
Electronic & Experimental
Folk & Americana
Indie
Pop
Rock
Heavy
Rap
New Band*
Audience Choice**
Breakthrough Artist
Breakout Artist
Festival of the Year**
Producer of the Year**
Venue of the Year**
Video of the Year**
*A band that satisfies the above criteria who have never been nominated for an NMG Award before and in existence for 2 years or less. The results are taken from both audience and judges votes with the results weighted in favour of audience votes.
** Completely decided by a public vote. 1 vote per IP address is permitted.
In addition to the awards, Artist Development Prizes are awarded in a decision made jointly by the judges, event organisers and sponsors. These are tangible prizes that are given specifically to help artist development and can include studio recording time, venue/festival slots and merch