Kendrick Lamar is leading this year’s Grammy nominations, up for nine trophies, including record, song and album of the year.

The 38-year-old swept last year’s awards, taking home five gongs for his hit dis track Not Like Us.

The varied bag of Grammy nominees – featuring big names and a few surprises – also saw K-pop stars, a knighted British rocker and a Hollywood leading man make it into the Grammy competition.

Lady Gaga (who is up for record, song and album of the year too), Jack Antonoff and Canadian record producer-songwriter Cirkut follow Lamar with seven nominations each.

Sabrina Carpenter got six nods, matching her nomination tally for last year.

Alongside Lamar’s GNX, other albums to make it into the best album category this year include Lady Gaga’s Mayhem and Bad Bunny’s Debí Tirar Más Fotos (only the second all-Spanish language album to be nominated in the category, following the Puerto Rican rapper’s 2023 all-Spanish album Un Verano Sin Ti).

They are all potential first-time winners in the category.

Also up for the top album prize are Sabrina Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend, Justin Bieber’s Swag, Clipse, Pusha T & Malice’s Let God Sort Em Out, Leon Thomas’s Mutt, and Tyler, the Creator’s Chromakopia.

Despite releasing a new album earlier this year, Taylor Swift, didn’t make it on to the best album nominees as The Life Of A Showgirl came out after the close of the eligibility period. The window ran from 31 August 2024 to 30 August 2025.

K-pop gets its moment

With K-pop typically ignored by the Grammys (BTS are the only K-pop artists to previously get a nod) this year saw two K-pop tracks in contention for best song.

Golden, the lead track from global phenomenon KPop Demon Hunters and APT, the megahit by former Blackpink member Rosé alongside Bruno Mars, both made it on to the list.

Rosé got nods in four other categories, including best record, while KPop Demon Hunters got three other nominations, including in the best pop duo/group performance category.

British artist Lola Young, who is the niece of acclaimed children’s writer Julia Donaldson, got a nod in the best new artist category, alongside Olivia Dean. Both topped the UK charts this year.

They will compete against KATSEYE, The Marias, Addison Rae, sombr, Leon Thomas and Alex Warren. Last year the category was won by Good Luck, Babe! singer Chappell Roan.

Timothée Chalamet is up for a Grammy

In less expected Grammy news, Sir Elton John also got a nod alongside US singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile for the song Never Too Late, which features on the soundtrack of the 2024 Sir Elton documentary of the same name.

Meanwhile, actor Timothée Chalamet got his first Grammy nod in the best compilation soundtrack for visual media category for his work on Oscar-nominated movie A Complete Unknown, in which he played Bob Dylan.

Nominations were announced by past Grammy winners, including Sabrina Carpenter, Doechii and last year’s best new artist winner, Chappell Roan.

Sharon, Kelly and Jack Osbourne came together to announce the rock and metal album nominations in tribute to Ozzy, who died in July. He had previously won in both categories.

The annual ceremony – which gives out a whopping 95 gongs in total – has four big categories: album, record and song of the year, and best new artist.

Following Beyoncé’s historic win for best album and best country album for Cowboy Carter, this year the country category has been divided into two: best traditional country album and best contemporary country album.

There’s also the new addition of a standalone category for best album cover.

Last year, Beyoncé made history as the Grammy’s most nominated artist, winning album of the year for the first time.

Winners will be chosen by the roughly 15,000 voting members of the Recording Academy.

The 68th Grammy Awards take place on Sunday, 1 February 2026, at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.

Main category nominees

Album Of The Year
DeBi TiRAR MaS FOtoS, Bad Bunny
Swag, Justin Bieber
Man’s Best Friend, Sabrina Carpenter
Let God Sort Em Out, Clipse, Pusha T and Malice
MAYHEM, Lady Gaga
GNX, Kendrick Lamar
Mutt, Leon Thomas
CHROMAKOPIA, Tyler, The Creator

Record Of The Year
DtMF, Bad Bunny
Manchild, Sabrina Carpenter
Anxiety, Doechii
Wildflower, Billie Eilish
Abracadabra, Lady Gaga
luther, Kendrick Lamar with SZA
The Subway, Chappell Roan
APT, Bruno Mars and Rosé

Song Of The Year
Abracadabra, Lady Gaga
Anxiety, Doechii
APT, Bruno Mars and Rosé
DtMF, Bad Bunny
Golden, EJAE, Audrey Nuna and REI AMI
luther, Kendrick Lamar with SZA
Manchild, Sabrina Carpenter
Wildflower, Billie Eilish

Best New Artist
Olivia Dean
KATSEYE
The Marias
Addison Rae
sombr
Leon Thomas
Alex Warren
Lola Young

Celebrity Traitors star David Olusoga says there was one major flaw in the faithful’s gameplay, and that was having “too much fun”.

The first UK celebrity series of the popular reality show has been a ratings hit since its launch a month ago, wrapping up with a tense finale on Thursday night.

NB. This article contains spoilers related to the final episode

Speaking to Sky News’ Anna Jones and Kamali Melbourne on the new Mornings with Jones and Melbourne, Olusoga said: “We were brilliant at the tasks and every day we went out and did what were basically bonding exercises.

“We all really got to know each other, and then we were terrible at the round table because we just liked each other too much.”

The 55-year-old historian says it was a “devilishly difficult game,” admitting he would have been a “terrible” traitor because he “wasn’t very good as a faithful”.

Treacherous Alan Carr was crowned the winner of the show, after a nail-biting roundtable which saw fellow traitor Cat Burns banished, followed by faithful Joe Marler.

The celebrities proved to be the worst in the show’s UK history at rooting out the traitors, a fact not lost on Olusoga: “For the most part, it was people sort of not being very good to pointing fingers at each other”.

Respected for his intellect and insight, Olusoga says the show has left him questioning his skill set: “I learned the limits of my kind of my approach to logic, which made a lot of sense to me but didn’t really get me very far.”

Despite many viewers feeling Carr let slip plenty of clues that he was a traitor, Olusoga says he never once suspected him.

Olusoga says: “It was like a double bluff. It was somebody who wasn’t trying to disguise that they were a traitor, therefore, it seemed logical that they weren’t a traitor…

“I think, of all the people, Alan probably got the fewest votes in the entire show. The other thing is, Alan is a national treasure. He’s innately likeable. I think none of us really wanted to believe Alan was a traitor because he had us laughing, we were in stitches the whole time.”

Despite his lack of competitive success on the show, he says it’s an experience he relished.

“It’s very easy to get stuck in your own ruts as an adult, so to be plucked out of your world, to have your phone taken away from you, to be put in this entirely new environment – this amazing, surreal environment, with these amazing people – it was like the first week of university again. It was like starting a new school. That was wonderful.”

Previously a fan of the show, he says being a player was a completely different ballgame: “You really haven’t got a clue… you see patterns in the clouds”.

He also has no regrets about his decision to get involved: “I’ve been asked to do a lot of different shows. And I’ve always said no to all of them. But even before doing it, my view was, Traitors is special”.

Olusoga is currently working on a Remembrance project with Findmypast to archive pictures of fallen soldiers in the First World War.

A new documentary proves “beyond any shadow of a doubt” that the Elgin Marbles were stolen, according to its director.

David Wilkinson claims The Marbles settles one of the most divisive debates in cultural heritage: whether 19th-century diplomat Lord Elgin legally acquired the Parthenon Sculptures, better known as the Elgin Marbles.

The film revisits how the sculptures were removed from the Parthenon in Athens while Greece was under Ottoman rule – and ended up in London.

It argues that Lord Elgin did not legally acquire the artefacts – and instead, it amounts to “the greatest heist in art history”.

Actor Brian Cox, historian Dominic Selwood and solicitor Mark Stephens are among those who appear in the documentary.

The British government bought the sculptures from Lord Elgin and installed them into the trusteeship of the British Museum, where they have remained for 200 years.

“He needed the money from the British government to pay for all the bribes he’d given to members of the Ottoman Empire,” Wilkinson says of the transaction.

“Lord Elgin did sell them … but the question becomes, did Lord Elgin actually have the right to purchase them?”

Classical archaeologist Mario Trabucco della Torretta dismisses Wilkinson’s claims.

“The allegation of bribery to obtain the Marbles is just wrong in historical terms,” he told Sky News.

Torretta was the key architect behind a joint letter that included former prime minister Liz Truss, historian Dr David Starkey and Sir John Redwood – alleging the British Museum is part of a “covert” and “accelerating campaign” to return the Elgin Marbles to Greece.

Responding to Wilkinson’s claims of bribery, he added: “The only reference to ‘presents’ comes years after the start of the removals … do people presume that they run a ‘bribe now, pay later’ scheme back then in Constantinople?”

One of the most contentious points in the debate is the legitimacy of an Ottoman permission document known as a “firman”, which is claimed to have authorised Lord Elgin removing the items from Greece.

There is only an Italian text referred to as a translation of this document.

Wilkinson said: “It was normal practice at the time that a copy would be kept in what was then Constantinople, and another copy would have been sent off to Athens.

“There would be a record in Istanbul and the Turks have gone through it in great detail over many decades and they can find nothing.”

Speaking to Sky News in 2024, Dr Zeynep Boz – head of combatting illicit trafficking for Turkey’s culture ministry – said there is no proof of the firman in the Ottoman archive.

“Despite extensive archival research, no such firman has been found. It is even difficult to call this document a translation when the original is not available,” she said at the time.

Torretta offers an explanation: “Burning the Ottoman governor’s archive was one of the first acts of the Greek revolution.”

While the arguments are not new, The Marbles also examines how other institutions have handled similar restitution cases.

In the film, Cox says if the marbles would have gone back to Athens already if they had found their way to Edinburgh and not London.

Back in 2023, the National Museum of Scotland returned The House Of Ni’isjoohl memorial pole to Canada.

Meanwhile, Glasgow’s Kevingrove Art Gallery Museum returned a shirt to the South Dakota Cultural Heritage Center in the US.

And when it comes to the Parthenon Sculptures – Germany’s Heidelberg University and The Vatican have both returned fragments to Greece.

The British Museum Act 1963 prevents treasures being legally given away by the British Museum.

The government has repeatedly it has no plans to change existing policy on restitution, and that it is up to the trustees of the museum to decide.

A spokesperson for the British Museum repeated a statement given to Sky News in July: “Discussions with Greece about a Parthenon Partnership are ongoing and constructive.”

The documentary scrutinises the ethics of foreign national treasures that were taken and are now housed in Western museums, but as it stands the institutional and governmental answers don’t appear to be changing.

The Marbles is in UK and Irish cinemas from today.