Hollywood Music in Media Awards Sets 2026 Nominee Field

The 17th annual Hollywood Music in Media Awards will hand out its trophies on November 18 at the Avalon Hollywood, and the nominee list released today puts three billion-dollar earners — Spider-Man: Brand New Day, The Odyssey and Michael — directly into the race alongside a wide field of awards-season hopefuls.

The HMMAs honor composers, songwriters, music supervisors and artists for music in film, television, video games and other visual media. The ceremony has functioned in recent years as an early indicator for the Best Score and Best Song races that follow at the guilds and the Academy. Last year, Ryan Coogler's Sinners took three prizes: Best Score for a feature film, Best Song for a feature film, and Best On-Screen Performance. That result set the template for what a dominant music film can do on this circuit.

Who leads the score races?

The Score — Feature Film category names Ludwig Göransson for The Odyssey, Carter Burwell for Wild Horse Nine, Damon Albarn for Artificial, Rebekka Karijord for Tenzing, Son Lux for Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, Jared Michael Fry for Heart of the Beast, and The Behemoth! Collective for Behemoth!.

The sci-fi/fantasy category carries the heaviest commercial weight:

• John Williams — Disclosure Day
• Hans Zimmer — Dune: Part Three
• Michael Giacchino — Spider-Man: Brand New Day
• Daniel Pemberton — Project Hail Mary
• James Newton Howard — The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping
• Joseph Trapanese — Whalefall
• Michael Abels — Hope

Pemberton appears twice more: in Score — Independent Film for The Drama, and as co-writer of "Let Me Sell You a Dream" from Musk with David Byrne. Multi-category presence of that kind typically signals a campaign with several routes to a win.

Horror/thriller nominations go to Marco Beltrami for Scream 7, Danny Elfman for Send Help, Volker Bertelmann for Clayface, Rock Burwell for Obsession, Hays Holladay for Resident Evil, and Edo Van Breemen and Kane Parsons for Backrooms.

Randy Newman lands in Score — Animated Film for Toy Story 5, against Michael Giacchino for Ray Gunn, Kris Bowers for Hexed, Steven Price for Coyote Vs. Acme, Brian Tyler for The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, Ricky Ho for The Violinist, and Dario Marianelli for Wildwood.

What do the song categories show?

Song — Feature Film pits five writers' rooms against each other, with "When I'm Home" from The Odyssey — written by James Blake, Travis Scott, Ludwig Göransson and Christopher Nolan — carrying the highest profile in the group. The full slate:

• "Draw You Out" from The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping — Noah Kahan and Aaron Dessner
• "House Featuring John Cale" from Wuthering Heights — Charli XCX, John Cale, Finn Keane, Nathan Klein
• "Light Over the Hill" from Reminders of Him — Noah Cyrus, Justin Franks, PJ Harding
• "One Right Here" from Maserati: The Brothers — Diane Warren; performed by Andrea Bocelli and Jennifer Hudson
• "Your God Is Sleeping" from Behemoth! — Lukas Frank

Song — Animated Film contains the single most quoted nomination of the day: "I Knew It, I Knew You" from Toy Story 5, written by Taylor Swift and Jack Antonoff and performed by Swift. The category also lists "Bottle Up" from Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie, written by Ed Sheeran with Savan Kotecha, Johnny McDaid and Ilya Salmanzadeh and performed by the Backstreet Boys, "BRB" from Forgotten Island, "Someone to Hold" from Steps and "The Better Part of Bravery" from Wildwood.

The documentary song field brings Miley Cyrus ("Younger You," Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special), Kylie Minogue ("Light Up" from Kylie, co-written with Chris Martin), Linda Perry, David Byrne and Rosemarie featuring Jay Rock into contention. Jesse Eisenberg wrote "This City May Have Chewed Me Up (But It Hasn't Spit Me Out)" for The Debut, performed by Julianne Moore — and both song and performance earned nominations.

On-screen performance nominees run from Moore to Jaafar Jackson, whose "Bad" from Michael anchors the biopic's music presence alongside its music supervision nod for John Warhurst.

What else is on the ballot?

The remaining categories fill out the field:

• Score — Documentary: The Eyes of Ghana, You Can See Everything, Avedon, Running Wild: Return to the River, The Cycle of Love, The Truth and Tragedy of Moriah Wilson
• Score — Independent Film (Foreign Language): six entries, from Egypt's Ezma to Poland's The Cauliflower of Destiny
• Music Documentary/Special Program: Morgan Neville's Man on the Run, Oasis: Don't Look Back in Anger, Mark Isham: The Voice Within and others
• Music Supervision, Film: The Devil Wears Prada 2, Wuthering Heights, Mr. Irrelevant, Tony, 40 Watts From Nowhere
• Music-Themed Film: Michael, The Muppet Show, Behemoth!, Brother Verses Brother, Descendants: Wicked Wonderland

The headline names — Williams, Zimmer, Göransson, Giacchino, Elfman, Swift, Sheeran, Warren — now share one ballot, and November 18 decides which of them converts a nomination into hardware.