The soundtrack of Dhurandhar 2 has been submitted for Grammy Awards consideration across nine categories, The Indian Express reports, putting the sequel's music in the running for nominations at the next Grammy ceremony.

A submission is the first, mandatory step in the Recording Academy's process. Rights holders — typically a label or a film's music department — enter recordings into specific category slots during the annual submission window. Nine simultaneous category entries for a single soundtrack is an unusually broad spread, and it signals that the team behind the film's music wants voters to evaluate the work across multiple fields rather than in one flagship slot.

What does a nine-category submission actually mean?

It means paperwork, not nominations. The Recording Academy's members and expert committees only see submitted recordings; nothing not submitted can be nominated. By covering nine categories, the Dhurandhar 2 camp maximizes the number of doors its soundtrack can walk through.

For a film soundtrack, the plausible categories in a submission strategy of this scale typically include:

• Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media
• Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media
• Best Song Written for Visual Media
• Song and performance categories for individual tracks
• Production, engineering and arrangement fields for the technical craft behind the recordings

The exact nine slots chosen for Dhurandhar 2 have not been disclosed in the report, and the distinction matters. A soundtrack entered in compilation and score fields competes against screen-music peers; entries in general song or performance categories place it against the full Grammy field, which is a far tougher ballot.

Where does the submission sit in the Grammy timeline?

Submissions feed into a fixed sequence. After the entry period closes, the Academy screens the recordings for eligibility, voters cast first-round ballots, and review committees in some categories assess the results before the final nominations round. Only then does the shortlist go to the full membership for the vote that decides winners.

So the nine-category filing for Dhurandhar 2 guarantees nothing beyond a place on the ballot. It does, however, establish intent: the soundtrack's team is treating the recording as a serious awards-season player, not a single-category long shot.

Why does this matter for the race?

Indian film music has a complicated relationship with the Grammys. The awards overwhelmingly reward English-language releases, and visual-media categories are dominated by Hollywood and streaming titles. A Hindi film soundtrack submitted across nine categories stretches that frame — the campaign logic mirrors how major studio soundtracks are positioned, with entries spanning performance, songwriting and craft fields to give voters multiple touchpoints.

The breadth also changes the internal arithmetic of the campaign. Each category entry creates a separate vote that must be won, which in practice demands screening events, screener distribution and targeted outreach to the specific voting pools in each field. A nine-category strategy is expensive and labor-intensive; teams rarely attempt it unless they believe the recordings can survive first-round screening and score with niche voter blocs, such as engineers and arrangers who vote in the craft categories.

What happens next?

The immediate milestones are procedural. The Academy screens the submissions for eligibility, then the first-round ballot goes to voters, and nominations follow. Until the nominations announcement, the nine entries exist only as possibilities.

For Dhurandhar 2, the submission has already delivered one thing a campaign cannot buy later: eligibility across the widest possible range of categories. Whether that converts into a single nomination will depend on how the soundtrack performs against the visual-media field and, in any general categories, against the full Grammy ballot.