2026 iHeartRadio Music Awards air tonight on Fox with star-studded lineup

The 2026 iHeartRadio Music Awards air tonight on Fox, covering the past year's most-streamed and most-played artists across pop, hip-hop, country, and Latin music. The show is among the first major music awards telecasts of 2026 on broadcast television, arriving at a point in the calendar when the industry is still processing the Grammy results from February and looking ahead to the summer touring season. Fox will carry the broadcast live, with iHeartMedia's radio stations running simulcast coverage for listeners who prefer audio over the televised version.

The iHeartRadio Music Awards differ from the Grammys and the AMAs in a specific way that matters commercially: the majority of the awards are determined by data from iHeartRadio's streaming platform and its network of terrestrial radio stations, which collectively reach approximately 150 million monthly listeners in the United States. That makes the iHeart awards a more direct reflection of what radio audiences actually consumed over the past year, rather than what a voting academy or retail sales figures favor.

What to expect from tonight's ceremony

Live performances are scheduled throughout the broadcast, which is expected to run approximately two and a half hours. The show typically opens with a high-energy performance from a pop or hip-hop act to establish the tone before moving into the first category presentations. iHeartRadio has confirmed multiple live sets but has not released a complete performance order ahead of the broadcast, which is standard practice for the ceremony to prevent early social media spoilers affecting East Coast viewership before West Coast audiences tune in.

The ceremony covers over 30 award categories including Song of the Year, Artist of the Year, Best New Pop Artist, Best Hip-Hop Song, Best Country Song, and Best Latin Pop Song. The fan vote component, which determines several categories, closed last week. Fan-voted categories tend to reward artists with highly organized online fanbases, which is why acts with dedicated streaming communities often outperform in those specific awards even when their radio data is strong but not dominant.

How the awards are decided and why that format matters

iHeartRadio's award methodology pulls from a combination of data sources. Airplay is measured by Luminate, the music analytics company formerly known as Nielsen Music, which tracks actual spins across iHeartMedia's more than 850 radio stations. Streaming data comes from iHeartRadio's own platform, and fan votes are collected through the iHeartRadio app over a multi-week voting window that opened alongside the nominations announcement in January.

The weighting between those three inputs varies by category, which creates some genuine unpredictability in the results. An artist who dominated radio airplay but whose streaming numbers underperformed might still win over an artist who was heavier on streams but lighter on traditional broadcast exposure. That tension between radio performance and streaming performance is one of the more interesting structural features of the iHeart awards compared to shows that rely on a single metric.

The broader awards season context

The iHeartRadio ceremony follows the 2026 Academy Awards, which aired earlier this month and drew an audience of approximately 19.2 million viewers on ABC according to Nielsen, up 8% from the 2025 ceremony. That performance has put broadcast networks in a more confident posture heading into live event programming, and Fox will be watching its iHeart ratings closely as a benchmark for how awards programming performs on the network outside of its sports and reality show strengths.

The Grammys, held on February 2 at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, drew 34.9 million viewers on CBS according to Nielsen, the highest Grammy viewership since 2020. That number has set an optimistic baseline for the rest of the 2026 music awards calendar, and the iHeartRadio show is one of several broadcast ceremonies trying to sustain that audience momentum through the spring.

Where and how to watch tonight

The 2026 iHeartRadio Music Awards broadcast begins at 8 PM Eastern on Fox. The show will be available to stream live through the Fox Now app for viewers with a participating cable or satellite subscription, and Hulu's live TV tier will also carry the Fox feed in real time. iHeartRadio's app will run an audio simulcast for radio listeners. The full broadcast will be available on demand through Fox's streaming platforms the following day for viewers who miss the live airing.

Fox has not confirmed a streaming deal with a third-party platform for same-night availability outside its own ecosystem, which means viewers without a Fox affiliate or live TV streaming subscription will need to wait for the on-demand release. The complete list of nominees across all 30-plus categories is available on the iHeartRadio website.