Paul McCartney has received his first Mercury Prize nomination in 2026 for The Boys of Dungeon Lane. The Mercury Prize honours the best album of the year by a British or Irish artist, and the shortlist also puts Olivia Dean, Raye and Dave in the same field.
The Boys of Dungeon Lane
The Boys of Dungeon Lane is described as a look back at McCartney's Liverpool childhood and his early friendships with his Beatles bandmates. That framing gives the nomination a different shape from the usual present-tense pop campaign: it is an album rooted in memory, but now competing against newer, more commercially dominant releases.
In May, McCartney said: "My collaborator was probably one of the best writers of the century, so, yeah, you’re going to miss him. But when I write [about a specific place], I kind of know he would’ve known it. I can gauge his reaction: that’s good, stick that in." John Lennon is the reference point in those remarks, and the album's nomination now places that personal material inside one of the UK's most watched album awards.
Mercury Prize shortlist
Olivia Dean's The Art of Loving spent all but one of its 43 weeks since release in the UK Top 5, including eight weeks at No 1 in the UK. Raye's This Music May Contain Hope is her second album in a row to be nominated after My 21st Century Blues, while Dave returns with The Boy Who Played the Harp, which contains the global smash Raindance.
Florence + the Machine received her fourth Mercury nomination for Everybody Scream. Jade's That’s Showbiz Baby! reached No 3 in the UK, and Suede's Antidepressants reached No 2 in the UK. Dove Ellis is also on the list with Blizzard, which received a five-star Guardian rave.
Help and the snub
Help, a charity album recorded at Abbey Road to raise money for War Child, is the rare compilation to reach the shortlist. It includes new recordings by Arctic Monkeys, Pulp, Sampha, English Teacher, Ezra Collective, Young Fathers and Beth Gibbons, and only The Help Album had been nominated in Mercury history before it.
The shortlist also creates a clearer line between recognition and omission. Dave won the Mercury prize with Psychodrama in 2019, yet his follow-up We’re All in This Together did not make the list. Lily Allen is part of the wider conversation around who did not land a place, which is the usual trade-off in a shortlist built to mix headline names, critical favourites and one-off curiosities.
For readers tracking the field, the key change is simple: McCartney is no longer only a reference point for the prize's history, he is now inside it. What the shortlist does not yet say is when the winner will be announced, so the race now turns on which of these albums can convert profile, sales and critical momentum into the final vote.
