Latin Grammys Finally Add Contemporary Mexican Music Album Category

Peso Pluma, Eslabon Armado, Junior H and more artists will now have a better chance of winning a Latin Grammy thanks to changes the Latin Recording Academy has made to its eligibility guidelines ahead of the awards' 25th annual edition.

The organization created a new category called Best album of Contemporary Mexican Music (Regional-Mexican Field), which will recognize “vocal or instrumental albums of Contemporary Regional Music of Mexico, in Spanish,” according to the Academy. More than half of the album must contain new material, and 60 percent of it must preserve “the essence of the genres of Regional Mexican Music.”

The change will now open the Latin Grammys to the recognition of corridos tumbados. An op-ed in Los Angeles Times last year he lamented the exclusion of Rancho Humilde, a label specializing in corridos tumbados and releasing records by Junior H and Natanael Cano. But he praised Pluma's recognition.

In addition, the Academy renamed its Best MPB (Música Popular Brasileira) to MABP (Música Afro Portuguesa-Brasileira). And added a new category in the electronic field: Best Latin Electronic Music Performance. To be eligible, more than half of the album should be Latin electronic music and the samples should not represent more than a quarter of the lyrics, as well as other qualifications.

The Academy also made minor tweaks to its definition of what qualifies for the singer-songwriter field (60 percent of tracks must be in Spanish, Portuguese or other native dialect) and the long-form video category, reducing the duration of a film from 20 minutes to 12.

The Latin Recording Academy has not yet set when it will announce the nominations or host the 25th Annual Latin Grammys. both will likely happen in the fall. To be eligible for an award, a release must have been released between June 1, 2023 and May 31, 2024, so these changes may prove to be a boon for records that haven't even been released yet.