Drake Skips Grammy Submissions Again for 2027

Drake is not submitting to the Grammys. Again. Billboard confirmed that Aubrey Graham has opted out of Grammy consideration for his entire 2026 release slate, meaning Iceman, Habibti, and Maid Of Honour are all off the table for the 69th Annual Grammy Awards set for February 7, 2027. He even telegraphed the move inside the music itself. On "Make Them Know," the closing track from Iceman, he raps directly: "This album, I'm never submittin' it."

Three albums dropped on the same day and none of them are going near the Recording Academy. That is a statement whether he frames it that way or not.

Why Drake Has Been Boycotting the Grammys for Years

This is not a new position for Drake. His frustration with the Recording Academy has been building publicly since at least 2020, when the Weeknd was shut out of nominations despite After Hours being one of the most commercially dominant album cycles of that year. Drake responded at the time with a pointed observation that still holds: "I think we should stop allowing ourselves to be shocked every year by the disconnect between impactful music and these awards, and just accept that what once was the highest form of recognition may no longer matter to the artists that exist now and the ones that come after."

He withdrew his 2022 nominations outright. He declined to submit in 2023. He made an exception for Her Loss in 2024, widely believed to be for his collaborator 21 Savage's benefit rather than his own. He skipped 2025 and 2026 submissions entirely. The 2027 cycle continues that streak.

The numbers behind the boycott are worth sitting with. Drake has 55 Grammy nominations across his career and five wins, with the most recent coming through his feature on Future's "Wait For U" in 2023. That means he has continued to accumulate nominations through other artists' submissions even while pulling his own work. The Recording Academy keeps counting him. He keeps not showing up.

What the Grammy Network Switch Means for the Bigger Picture

The 2027 ceremony carries its own context beyond Drake. The Grammys are moving off CBS after decades and landing on ABC, Hulu, and Disney+, a shift that reflects a broader realignment in how music's mainstream institutions are trying to stay relevant in a streaming-first moment. Nominations for the 2027 cycle drop November 16.

That context matters for anyone watching how legacy award shows negotiate their authority. The Grammys are chasing distribution reach at the same moment one of the most nominated artists in the show's history is publicly declining to participate. Those two things are not unrelated.

For independent artists and labels tracking how the industry values recognition, Drake's sustained boycott is one of the clearest examples of a globally dominant act deciding that chart performance, streaming numbers, and cultural staying power are sufficient measures of impact on their own. Whether you agree with that position or not, it's a real argument, and it's coming from someone with 55 nominations worth of standing to make it.

The Grammys have never been a perfect system. The disconnect between what moves culture and what wins trophies is well-documented and long-running. Drake is not the first artist to name it, but he is one of the only ones at his commercial scale to consistently act on it by removing himself from the process entirely.

Nominations land November 16. The ceremony airs February 7, 2027, now on ABC and streaming on Hulu and Disney+. Whether Drake appears anywhere on that nominations list through features or collaborative work remains to be seen, but his own catalog will not be part of the conversation by his own design.

For creators watching how artists navigate institutional recognition versus audience-driven validation, this moment is worth paying attention to. The conversation about what awards actually measure, and who they serve, is only getting louder.