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Johanna Stickland
Amber Still, executive director of the Polaris Music Prize
Awards
‘Protect the Prize’: The Polaris Music Prize Undergoes Its Biggest Period of Change
Now entering its third decade, the Canadian critic’s prize has expanded its voting pool, adjusted to financial constraints and expanded to award both albums and songs. After years defined by its refined focus, the changes mark a major expansion of the organization’s mission.
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In 2025, the Polaris Music Prize celebrated its 20th anniversary. Entering its third decade, the award is undergoing what might be its biggest period of change. From funding to voting process, the organization is continuing to evolve.
The cultural not-for-profit organization has spent the better part of two decades creating a space in the industry for Canadian acts to be recognized based solely artistic merit, rather than sales, genre or support from a record label. Founded in the 2000s as Canada's answer to the Mercury Prize, the organization became a registered Canadian charity in 2017.
Over its two-decade run, the Polaris Music Prize has awarded many notable acts, including Kaytranada, Haviah Mighty, Jeremy Dutcher (Twice), Caribou, Feist and more. It's also recognized greats like Alanis Morissette, Leonard Cohen, Beverly Glenn-Copeland and Neil Young through the Slaight Family Polaris Heritage Prize.
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To commemorate its anniversary, Polaris introduced the SOCAN Polaris Song Prize and launched Polaris Festival, a multi-day event across Toronto, showcasing a range of Canadian talent.
But while new initiatives were introduced during its 2025 prize cycle, the longstanding album prize winnings dwindled from $50,000 to $30,000, while the 10 short-listed artists would no longer be awarded $3,000 — potentially indicating funding issues .
As it enters its 21st year, the Polaris Music Prize is finding new ways to persevere, experimenting with new initiatives without abandoning its guiding principles.
The Final Album Voting Process
Last week, the Polaris Prize unveiled its 2026 short list of 10 albums competing to be named the best in Canada. It includes acts like Charlotte Cornfield, Peaches, Tanya Tagaq and Canada's hottest band, Angine de Poitrine.
The winner, though, will be decided in a whole new way.
When the organization announced the long list at NXNE, it subtly revealed that the final album winner will be decided by a 205-person voting pool. That represents the first major process change in two decades.
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In previous years, that 200-plus jury voted to determine the long and short list, but an annually chosen 11-person grand jury made the winning album decision each year. Each voter was chosen to advocate for one of the 10 short-listed albums, with one member taking on a neutral role to help make the winning album choice. The long discussion and voting process between those 11 grand jurors in a room (shifted to Zoom after the pandemic) was a major aspect of the award’s identity from day one, which makes this year’s change monumental for the organization.
“It's something that we've been thinking about for a while,” Amber Still, executive director at Polaris Music Prize, tells Billboard Canada.
Still joined the organization’s board in 2021, assuming the role from Claire Dagenais, who took over the position in March 2020 following the departure of Polaris Prize founder Steve Jordan.
“Since I've come on the board, we've been looking at everything that Polaris has been doing and seeing if there's any way that we can improve it or find opportunity within it,” Still says, pointing to the award gala and ceremony’s move to Massey Hall back in 2023.
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Still explains that the expanded jury is a part of a one-year “pilot program” to ensure that it’s successful and satisfies the existing members. “We will evaluate it at the end and then see if it will be permanent.”
Ahead of the final vote, Still shares that the organization has introduced virtual discussion sessions open to the entire jury, which will allow jury members to meet face-to-face on Zoom and talk about the albums. Jury members will make one vote for the winning album, rather than ranking their choices.
“Having all of those jurors be able to stand behind [the winning album] and to understand why this album won is important to us," Still explains.
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Consisting of music journalists, critics, industry members and academics, the 205-person voting pool was meticulously selected to represent diverse music listeners across the country.
"We try to make sure we have the correct amount of jurors per population of each province so that it is truly reflective of Canada's geography,” Still explains. “Even though we don't consider genre, we want to have people bringing music forward from as many genres as possible. Our motto is ‘protect the Prize.’”
The SOCAN Polaris Song Prize
While the Polaris Prize has always held up the album as its key work of art, that changed last year when the organization awarded its first SOCAN Polaris Song Prize.
Mustafa took home the inaugural award for his gripping track, “Gaza Is Calling." The song won $10,000 to be split between the song’s Canadian performers and credited Canadian songwriters.
The same 205-person voting pool voted on the winning 2025 track, unknowingly testing the new album voting process — providing clear evidence that the expanded voting pool was an effective tactic that could be applied to other areas of voting within the organization.
“We had further backing that this is a possibility for us,” Still says. “It made it easier to implement for this year.”
Still says the idea was to recognize “a whole new group of artists” who weren’t necessarily releasing full albums or bodies of work. Ironically, though, all of the inaugural short listers were also nominated for the album prize. Ideally, though, it will expand the mandate to celebrate music that may not otherwise have been recognized.
The inaugural award also launched the organization’s submissions portal, a platform that allows artists to directly submit their songs and albums for consideration. Previously, to be considered, an album would have to be personally recommended by a juror — though jurors still have to submit any submission portal discoveries for official consideration on the discussion board.
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This year, there were 410 album submissions between Sept. 1, 2025, and May 1, 2026. Of those entries, communications officer Aaron Brophy says, seven artist-submitted records made the long list, while three have advanced to the short list.
Overcoming Financial Hardships
While the song prize was welcomed, it signalled some financial constraints within the organization.
Along with FACTOR, a significant funder of the Polaris Music Prize is the Slaight Family Foundation, founded by Canadian philanthropist Gary Slaight. “They’re a long-time funder who's given us over a million dollars over the years, which has all gone straight to artists, but last year, they started lowering their contributions,” Still says. But with the addition of the Song Prize, the Slaight Foundation now awards $40,000 between two winners, rather than $50,000 to one winner.
“We have definitely had ups and downs over the last year,” Still explains. "Being a charity, some grants from our long-term partners came in a little lower [than they had previously] for various reasons, but we were able to apply for grants that we hadn't before. It was a give-and-take.”
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They continue: “It's interesting because we're producing more [content] than ever. A lot of our partners are government-funded, and Canada has been going through an economically turbulent couple of years. Those fluctuations trickle down to organizations."
One of their financial wins was the inaugural Polaris Festival, hosted in partnership with SiriusXM Canada. “In terms of money going to artists, we were over the amount of money that we'd ever done,” Still explains. “At the end of the day, the impact is more important than ever for the artists that you set out to serve — that's what matters, and that’s what sees us through.”
Engaging With Music Listeners In and Beyond Ontario
The first-ever Polaris Festival’s lineup included an array of Canadian talent, including Begonia, Charlotte Cornfield, Jaywood, Cadence Weapon, Shad, The Dears and Myst Milano, among others — many acts were alumni of the Polaris Music Prize. According to Still, the event’s success encouraged them to keep going.
“We planned on doing six events, and we ended up doing 22 events,” Still says. "We booked over 101 artists. We realized that this is an opportunity that we should keep going with. The impact perfectly aligned with everything that we've been trying to do.” The festival will return in September.
Despite the organization and many of its jurors being grounded in Toronto, Still shares that they would like to engage with music fans around the country. "We’re a national organization. We've been very lucky to get funding here, but we would love to find opportunities to make things happen in all major provinces.”
One main goal of all the changes is to engage more with the general public of music fans throughout the country.
While the Polaris Music Prize is well-known amongst media and industry members, it’s not as familiar a concept to the average listener.
“We’re well-respected in the music industry, but we've never made a big effort to try to make the public understand what we do and what makes us unique," admits Still. “We want to create programming that draws people into a local venue or through an artist that they know and love, so that they can hear about Polaris.”
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