Honorary Awards 2026
01.12.2025 – It’s time to celebrate! Today, the German Record Critics’ Award Association announces its three honorary award winners for 2026. The PdSK e.V. jury awards honorary prizes to groups and individuals from the music world who have set new standards in their respective fields with their recordings.
In this spirit, the following awards will be presented: the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, which has set benchmarks in historical performance practice, for its consistently infectious curiosity about Baroque repertoire; Anouar Brahem, who crosses borders and defies conventional categories like world music or jazz with his explorations on the oud and lets the magic of the moment happen; »angry woman« Jennifer Weist, who uses her exceptionally versatile and powerful singing voice to speak out against sexualised violence and patriarchy in her lyrics about unyielding (female) anger, self-determination and, yes, vulnerability.
The awards will be presented in a festive setting with an audience. The PdSK e.V. will announce the time and place in due course.
Here are the reasons given by the annual committee:
Honorary Awards
The following critics served on the 2025 annual committee (in the photo from left to right): Regine Müller (chorus and vocal ensemble jury), Carsten Niemann (early music jury), Joachim Mischke (film music jury), Nastassja von der Weiden (club and dance jury), Helge Grünewald (music film jury), Sabrina Palm (folk and singer/songwriter jury), Petra Rieß (R&B, soul and hip-hop jury), Julia Kaiser (lieder and vocal recital jury) und Kai Luehrs-Kaiser (opera I jury).