Ella Langley leads 60th CMA Awards nominations as Taylor Swift returns to the ballot

The Country Music Association on Thursday unveiled the nominees for the 60th Annual CMA Awards, with singer-songwriter Ella Langley leading the field at nine nominations and Taylor Swift returning to the ballot for the first time in four years on the strength of a song written for an animated sequel.

Langley's nine nods span single, song and album of the year, as well as female vocalist and music video categories, putting her within one nomination of Alan Jackson's 2002 record of 10 in a single year. Swift's nomination is for single of the year, for "I Knew It, I Knew You," the song she wrote for "Toy Story 5" that reached No. 1 on the Billboard/Luminate country airplay chart days before the announcement. It is her first CMA nomination since 2022 and marks a rare instance of Swift's music competing directly in a country-format category since she moved fully into pop a decade ago.

Who else made the ballot

Miranda Lambert followed with seven nominations, while Kacey Musgraves and songwriter Ben West each collected five. Cody Johnson, Chris Stapleton and Stephen Wilson Jr. earned four apiece, and Dave Clauss, Luke Combs and reigning entertainer of the year Lainey Wilson picked up three each, according to the nominee list, which was announced live on "Good Morning America".

The entertainer of the year category, the CMA's top honor, pits Combs, Johnson, Langley, Stapleton and Wilson against one another. The nominations also recognized 13 first-time nominees, including songwriter Jack Antonoff and rising vocalists Avery Anna and Carter Faith, a sign of continued turnover at the top of a genre that has spent the past two years absorbing crossover interest from pop and hip-hop audiences.

The Country Music Association was founded in 1958 as the first trade organization built around a single music format, and it has staged the CMA Awards annually since 1967. The 60th edition arrives as country music posts some of its strongest streaming and touring numbers in years, with the CMA, the Academy of Country Music and CMT all competing for the same pool of artists and, increasingly, the same crossover audience that has followed pop and hip-hop acts toward Nashville collaborations.

The full nominee slate, including album of the year contenders Langley's "Dandelion," Combs, Musgraves, Parker McCollum and Zach Top, was read live on ABC's "Good Morning America" and posted in full on CMAawards.com, alongside categories for male vocalist, musical event, music video and vocal group and duo of the year.

Langley's near-record haul caps a two-year run that began with "You Look Like You Love Me," her 2024 duet with Riley Green, which went four-times platinum in the United States and won musical event of the year at that year's CMA Awards. She followed it with "Choosin' Texas," a single that spent six non-consecutive weeks atop the country charts, and built her second album, "Dandelion," released in April on Columbia Records, around that momentum. Both the song and the album carried into Thursday's nominations, giving Langley nods across single, song and album of the year, female vocalist, musical event and music video of the year.

Swift's return to a country ballot

Swift has not been nominated for a CMA Award since 2022 and has not attended the ceremony in person since 2016, when she made a surprise appearance to present entertainer of the year to Garth Brooks. Her relationship with the CMAs long predates her 2014 pivot to pop with "1989": she won the group's entertainer of the year award twice, in 2009 and 2011, and has 12 CMA trophies from 28 career nominations.

"I Knew It, I Knew You" closes "Toy Story 5" and leans on the cowgirl imagery of the film's Jessie character, a detail Swift referenced within hours of her nomination being read on air.

"LOOKS LIKE I HAVEN'T YEE'D MY LAST HAW. THANK YOU CMA!!!! See you there Nov. 18," Taylor Swift wrote in a message posted to her Instagram Stories.

CMA chief executive Sarah Trahern framed the nominations within the organization's anniversary year. "For six decades, the CMA Awards have celebrated excellence in Country Music," Trahern said in the group's statement. "We're grateful to CMA's Professional members, whose collective voice determines every nomination, bringing real expertise to the balloting process each year."

How the vote works, and what's next

Nominees are chosen by the CMA's roughly 7,000 voting-eligible professional members, drawn from across the country music industry rather than the general public. The organization's announcement that Lainey Wilson would return as host, made earlier this month on ESPN's "College GameDay," set up Thursday's nominee reveal as the next milestone toward the Nov. 18 broadcast.

• Final ballots go out to voting members on Oct. 1.
• Voting closes Oct. 27 at 6 p.m. Central, with results tabulated by Deloitte.
• The ceremony airs live from Nashville's Bridgestone Arena on ABC, with same-night streaming on Disney+ and next-day availability on Hulu.
• Tickets go on sale Sept. 18 through CMAworld.com.

Coverage of the announcement from Billboard and Rolling Stone noted that Langley's near-record haul reflects a broader shift in Nashville toward younger, streaming-driven artists even as veteran acts like Lambert and Musgraves remain fixtures of the major categories. Swift's nomination, meanwhile, arrives as awards-season prognosticators, per Variety's reporting, already expect "I Knew It, I Knew You" to figure into Grammy and Oscar conversations later this year, alongside her other 2026 single "The Fate of Ophelia."

Whether Swift performs on the CMA telecast itself remains an open question that neither she nor the organization has addressed publicly. She last sang on the show in 2013, backed by Vince Gill on an acoustic version of "Red," during the period when she was transitioning out of the format entirely. Her attendance alone, confirmed within hours of the nomination, is enough to make the 60th anniversary show one of the more closely watched country broadcasts of the year, alongside the fight between Langley, Combs, Johnson, Stapleton and Wilson for the entertainer of the year trophy that will close out the Nov. 18 telecast.

For a genre marking six decades of its flagship award show, the ballot released Thursday doubles as a statement about where Nashville's institutional voters see the format heading: toward newer names carrying the bulk of the nominations, with room still made for a pop superstar's country-rooted detour.