CMAT won best album for Euro-Country at the 2026 Ivor Novello awards on Thursday, as the Irish singer-songwriter’s record was recognised for turning her own romantic and existential crises into a wider portrait of recession-hit Ireland.
The 25th Ivors, which honour the best in British and Irish songwriting and screen composition, also crowned Jacob Alon, Rosalía and Sam Fender among the night’s other winners. Alon, whose debut album In Limerence was released in May 2025 and later nominated for the Mercury prize, picked up rising star and best song musically and lyrically for Don’t Fall Asleep after winning the critics’ choice award at the Brit awards in February. Rosalía was named international songwriter of the year, Fender took songwriter of the year, and Lola Young’s Messy won most performed work.
CMAT’s victory adds another major prize to a record that has already marked her out as one of the sharpest writers in contemporary pop. Euro-Country was praised in the ceremony’s results for folding private doubt into a broader social picture, with the album’s central tension coming from the way personal strain and national hardship sit side by side rather than apart. For an awards body built around songwriting craft, that mix of candour and scope clearly carried weight.
The rest of the ceremony reinforced that message. Tom Hodge won best original film score for Testimony, while David Holmes and Brian Irvine took best television soundtrack for Belfast-set drama Trespasses. The spread of winners across album, song, screen composition and television underlined how broad the Ivors’ reach has become, but also how firmly the night remained focused on writing rather than scale, sales or spectacle.
For CMAT, the result answers the question that hovered over Euro-Country from the start: whether an album rooted in intimate turbulence could land as a major statement about the world around it. The judges’ answer was yes, and they gave it the top album prize.
