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Cover art has always been an integral, visual part of experiencing an album. From photoshoots and creative direction to choices of typeface and color, album artwork adds an additional sensory experience to coincide with the music. And now, for the first time in its 68-year history, album covers are also part of the GRAMMYs.
Complementing the long-running Best Recording Package Category in the Package, Notes & Historical Field, the brand-new Best Album Cover Category recognizes the creativity and work of the art directors — in many cases, in tandem with the artists themselves — behind some of the year's most beautifully designed album artwork.
"In today's digital world, album covers are arguably more impactful than ever," said Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason jr. when the new Category was announced back in June. "Chances are, there's an iconic cover that's instantly recognizable to you, even if you've never owned the physical album. Their cultural significance is undeniable.
"That's one of the reasons members of the art director community and our Awards & Nominations members felt this Category was necessary," he added. "The Packaging Field has always thrived, but we expect this to be one of our most inclusive Categories to date."
Check out the first-ever nominees for Best Album Cover below and read the full 2026 GRAMMYs nominations list ahead of Music's Biggest Night on Feb. 1, 2026.
CHROMAKOPIA — Shaun Llewellyn & Luis "Panch" Perez, art directors (Tyler, The Creator)
With a catalog of striking, often colorful album covers, Tyler, The Creator opted to appear in sepia on the cover of his eighth studio set, CHROMAKOPIA. The stark portrait depicts the two-time GRAMMY-winning rapper wearing a ceramic mask of his own face, his right hand outstretched toward whomever is behind the camera.
The mask plays several purposes on the cover, mainly to introduce fans to St. Chroma, Tyler's latest alter ego (who bears a marked similarity to Chroma the Great from Norton Juster's classic children's book The Phantom Toolbooth), and tap into the album's themes of identity, authenticity and the divide between public persona and inner self.
According to art director Luis "Panch" Perez, Tyler wanted to channel the film noir of the 1930s and '40s, even bringing a screen test from an unnamed Alfred Hitchcock movie to set as inspiration. "He wanted the cover to feel like it came from a film of that era," Perez revealed in a November 2024 interview with ArtNews.
"It changes how you see Tyler, which was obviously very much a reason why he made it the way he made it," the rapper's longtime visual collaborator added of the eerie cover shot. "It makes the viewer really pay attention to what's going on with him. It makes you want to go, 'Wait, what's going on here? I'm unsettled by what I'm seeing.'"
The Crux — William Wesley II, art director (Djo)
The Crux, the third album by Joe Keery under his musical alias Djo, is bound by a tangible sense of place. Namely, the hotel of its title, which is filled with guests facing various crossroads of one kind or another in their lives.
Shot on the famed Paramount Pictures studio lot in Los Angeles, the album's cover — which was overseen by art director William Wesley II — brings the fictional Crux Hotel to life, as it teems with guests appearing in the windows of their rooms and passersby rushing to and fro below the building's old-fashioned neon sign. As a small airplane hauls a banner declaring, "I'M SORRY CINDY AND I LOVE YOU" across the top of the frame, Djo himself hangs precipitously from one of the hotel's second-story windows, clad in a white, '70s-style suit.
In a January appearance on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon," Keery revealed some of the inspiration behind the lively, Easter egg-packed cover art. "I've done stuff that's kind of minimalistic before and I just wanted a maximal cover … A theme of the record is 'one of many,' so just having a lot going on and a lot to look at," he said before pointing out the miniscule mouse dressed as the bellman that was included in the shoot "just for me."
Debí Tirar Más Fotos — Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, art director (Bad Bunny)
Bad Bunny's 2025 album, Debí Tirar Más Fotos, is notable for being the lone cover in this year's pack of nominated albums devoid of any human subject. Instead, the three-time GRAMMY winner — who art directed the cover himself — chose an image of two plastic Monobloc chairs in front of a banana tree to represent the love letter to his native Puerto Rico.
The cover of DtMF, which translates in English to I Should Have Taken More Photos, beautifully captures the essence and natural beauty of Bad Bunny's homeland, where he spent the better part of the summer and early fall performing his sold-out residency at San Juan's José Miguel Agrelot Coliseum.
The image is also punctuated by a palpable sense of longing created by the empty chairs in the foreground, which many fans speculated were a veiled reference to the rapper's past relationship to girlfriend Gabriela Berlingeri, with whom he split in 2022. While Bad Bunny has never publicly confirmed any connection between the cover art and his personal life, the back cover of the album includes a heartfelt dedication to his culture and community in his own words: "This project is dedicated to all Puerto Ricans around the world."
Glory — Cody Critcheloe & Andrew J.S., art directors (Perfume Genius)
Over the course of his career, Perfume Genius has appeared as a near-statuesque figure on many of his album covers, from the polished portraiture of 2014's Too Bright and shirtless still that graces the cover of 2020's Set My Heart on Fire Immediately to the painterly rendering of 2022's Ugly Season.
In the imagery for 2025's Glory, the art-pop auteur born Mike Hadreas is shown toppled over, sprawled on the floor of a wood-paneled home with his legs askew and midriff bare as a bevy of extension cords run beneath his body. In a conversation with Wallpaper upon Glory's release, Perfume Genius delved into the creative process behind the unnerving suburban scene, which was directed by his longtime collaborators Cody Critcheloe and Andrew J.S.
"I like how it looks: it could be a dance, or it could be that I'm sick, and there's something wrong with me. That was the thing that felt riskiest about that photoshoot, it could go any way," he told the outlet. "When we got the pictures back, it felt like a snapshot, almost like a still from a movie … It feels like the music, in that it's earnest and personal, but with absurdity and dramatics, and performance."
moisturizer — Hester Chambers, Ellis Durand, Henry Holmes, Matt de Jong, Jamie-James Medina, Joshua Mobaraki & Rhian Teasdale, art directors (Wet Leg)
Wet Leg's sophomore album, 2025's moisturizer, marks the band's first studio effort as a quintet with guitarist Joshua Mobraki, bassist Ellis Durand and drummer Henry Holmes joining original duo Rihan Teasdale and Hester Chambers as fully contributing members.
That newly evolved group mentality is also reflected in the British rockers' nomination for moisturizer's feral cover art, with all five members credited as art directors alongside Matt de Jong and Jamie-James Medina.
Teasdale and Chambers take center stage in the artwork, however. The frontwoman stares down the camera with a devilish grin, crouched on all fours, while the lead guitarist's back is to the camera, arms wrapped around herself to show off her pointed nails.
"Not just the album cover, but I think, like, the whole energy of the creative is kind of subversive," Teasdale explained to Variety upon the album's release. "Like, if there's any moments on there that are a bit sexy, it's also a bit disgusting. Juxtaposition is something that we've always done … That's something that is always fun to play with."