Megan Moroney leads ACM nominations with nine, Kane Brown in lineup
kane brown is part of a 2026 Academy of Country Music Awards season built around Megan Moroney’s nine nominations, the highest total in the field. The show streams May 17 at 8 p.m. EDT from the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, a shift from three years at Ford Center at The Star in Frisco, Texas.
Moroney’s nine nominations
Moroney leads the slate with nine nominations, putting her ahead of Miranda Lambert at eight and Ella Langley and Lainey Wilson at seven apiece. Chris Stapleton follows with six, Zach Top has five and Cody Johnson has four, a spread that keeps the race concentrated among a small group of repeat contenders.
Lainey Wilson enters as the 2025 entertainer of the year after winning the award for a second year in a row, and she is back in that category alongside Chris Stapleton, Cody Johnson, Luke Combs, Jelly Roll, Morgan Wallen and Moroney. That lineup gives the show a clear top tier before a single trophy is handed out.
Las Vegas after Frisco
The ACM Awards are leaving the Ford Center at The Star in Frisco after three years and moving to Las Vegas for the 2026 telecast. Shania Twain will host for the first time, taking over a role that had belonged to Reba McEntire, which gives the broadcast a reset both in location and onstage tone.
The women at the top of the nomination list add another layer to the night: Moroney, Lambert, Langley and Wilson lead the field, while Ashley McBryde called the shift meaningful, saying, “I think it is so cool,” and adding, “But I think we’ve managed — me, Miranda (Lambert), Carly (Pearce), Kelsey (Ballerini), we’ve been trying to build a table, and we’ve been trying for years to make the table bigger, and now it is. And I’m looking forward to operating in the environment that we built.”
Prime Video at 8 p.m. EDT
The broadcast will stream on Prime Video and on the Amazon Music channel on Twitch and the Amazon Music app, making the May 17 show available across multiple Amazon platforms at 8 p.m. EDT. For viewers, the practical change is simple: the ACMs are no longer tied to Frisco, and the night now pairs a new host with the year’s broadest nomination lead going to Moroney.
