Recording Academy Expands the R&B Field for the 69th Grammys

The Recording Academy is making another meaningful adjustment to its R&B corner of the Grammy Awards. For the 69th Grammys, the organization has introduced a new Best R&B Collaboration or Duo/Group Performance category and renamed Best R&B Performance to Best R&B Solo Performance, a shift that puts collaboration and solo work in separate lanes for the first time in years.

In the Academy’s announcement, CEO Harvey Mason Jr. framed the changes as part of the institution’s annual member-driven process. He said the updates reflect both the breadth of today’s music industry and the way artists are pushing the culture forward, noting that the new category gives collaboration its own space while also making room for solo performers to be recognized on their own terms.

For R&B listeners, the move lands with a little history behind it. Rated R&B pointed out that the Grammys once had a similar duo-or-group R&B category, which ran from 1967 through 2011 before being retired. Bringing that lane back under a new name suggests the Academy is acknowledging something the genre has always known: some of the most durable R&B records are built on chemistry, call-and-response, and voices meeting in the middle.

The R&B changes are part of a larger round of Grammy rule updates taking effect for 2027. The Academy also added four other categories, updated how Best New Artist eligibility works, lowered the album qualification threshold from 75 percent to 66 percent new recordings, and expanded recognition for songwriters and composers on winning projects in most genre album categories.

Those details matter because they show the Grammys continuing to reshape the awards system around how music is actually made now, not how it was packaged a decade ago. For R&B, a field that often moves fluidly between intimacy, ensemble work, and featured collaborations, the revised categories give the Academy a cleaner way to reward both the vocalist carrying a song alone and the voices that make a record feel bigger than one person.

The 69th Grammy Awards will air live on Sunday, Feb. 7, 2027, across ABC, Disney+ and Hulu. For R&B, this year’s rule changes are less about ceremony than recognition: the genre’s collaborative spirit is getting its own trophy case again.