§ THE TEA · 2 MIN READ
The Awards Went Home
The Caribbean Music Awards moved to Trinidad and Tobago for the first time, held September 19 in Port of Spain. An awards show relocating to the place the music comes from is a bigger deal than it sounds.
By Culture
THE SHORT VERSION
The fourth annual Caribbean Music Awards were held on September 19, 2026 at the National Academy for the Performing Arts in Port of Spain, marking the first time the ceremony has taken place in Trinidad and Tobago and in the Caribbean itself rather than in the United States.
An awards show changing venue does not usually merit a paragraph. This one does, because of which direction it moved.
The fourth annual Caribbean Music Awards took place on September 19 at the National Academy for the Performing Arts in Port of Spain. It is the first time the ceremony has been held in Trinidad and Tobago, and the first time it has been staged in the Caribbean at all.
The previous editions were held in the United States, which is the ordinary arrangement: the music comes from one place and the ceremony honouring it happens somewhere with a bigger arena and a broadcast deal.
Where a ceremony happens decides who can attend. A show in New York is accessible to artists with American visas, American management and the budget for a flight and a week of hotels. That is a filter, and it quietly shapes who gets nominated, who performs, and which version of a music gets presented as its centre.
Moving it to Port of Spain reverses the filter. The artists who live and work in the region are the ones who can walk in.
“The music never left home. The ceremony finally came to it.”
Caribbean music has been reshaping American popular sound for sixty years while being filed under world, tropical, or whatever the current word for not-quite-central is. Dancehall, soca, reggae, calypso and their descendants are in the DNA of hip-hop, R&B, pop and Afrobeats, and the borrowing has rarely been labelled.
An awards ceremony held in the region, naming its own categories and its own winners, is a small piece of infrastructure doing a specific job: deciding for itself what is good, in front of the people it is for.
That is the same instinct as a magazine that does not wait to be described and a label built at home rather than sought elsewhere. Own the room, and the room will tell the truth.
Go find the winners and listen to the ones you do not know. That is the whole point of an awards list and almost nobody uses it that way. Frequency is where to keep going afterwards, and the artists working near you are on Knect TV.
- Where were the Caribbean Music Awards held in 2026?
- At the National Academy for the Performing Arts in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, on September 19, 2026. It was the fourth edition of the awards and the first held in the Caribbean.
- Why does the location of an awards show matter?
- Because it determines who can realistically attend. A ceremony held in the United States favours artists with American visas, management and travel budgets, which quietly shapes who is nominated and who performs. Holding it in the region reverses that filter.
- How has Caribbean music influenced American music?
- Dancehall, soca, reggae and calypso and their descendants run through hip-hop, R&B, pop and Afrobeats, though the influence has often gone unlabelled while the music itself was categorised as a niche genre.
