2024 Trophy revealed, with updates to award categories!

The BRIT Awards with Mastercard 2024 will return for its 44th show on Saturday 2nd March, and today reveals the design of the 2024 BRIT Award, along with the identity of the artist behind the new creative. The BRITs also today confirm an update to next year’s Awards categories, which will open up opportunities for even more artists to be in the running for the biggest accolade in UK music.

The 2024 BRIT Awards, under the stewardship of Damian Christian as BRIT Committee Chair for a second year, is gearing up to deliver yet another unmissable show. For the millions tuning in from home in the UK and all over the world, the show will once again be held on a Saturday primetime TV slot, following the success of the 2023 event.

2024 BRIT trophy designed by British visual artist and painter Rachel Jones

Highly acclaimed British visual artist Rachel Jones (recently labelled by Time Out as ‘the most interesting abstract painter working today’ has designed this year’s BRIT awards trophy, and today The BRITs unveils the look of the new award. Rachel completed her BA Fine Art at Glasgow School of Art in 2013 and an MA Fine Art at the Royal Academy Schools, London, in 2019. She was included in Mixing It Up: Painting Today at the Hayward Gallery, London (2021), followed by solo exhibitions at the Chisenhale Gallery, London (2022) and the Long Museum, Shanghai (2023). Alongside her performance practice, which most recently took form as an operatic based work titled 'Hey, Maudie', Rachel has garnered an impressive reputation for her expressive, abstract and brightly coloured paintings. Rachel’s work is housed in prominent institutional collections including those of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; the Long Museum, Shanghai; The Arts Council England; and the Tate, where her piece 'lick your teeth, they so clutch' (2021) is currently on display as part of the Tate Britain's rehang. 

On being asked to design the 2024 BRIT trophy, Rachel said, 

“There’s such a major legacy around the position of being asked to design the award, so it was a huge honour to be chosen for this year. Designing the award is especially exciting because people will be able to see my interest in working with other mediums. I don’t want to be known as just a ‘painter’, and having collaborated recently with a composer and a poet on my opera [Joseph Howard and Victoria Adukwei for Hey, Maudie], I'm finally starting to enter different spaces and develop new perspectives on my work. It’s really incredible that this is part of that journey.”

Speaking further about the award design: 

“I work really intuitively so there weren’t any plans or sketches. It was a similar process to how I make paintings, which are always in layers. I worked from the base up, I covered up to the chest in a variety of colours and then I started to focus on how to develop certain patterns, textures and colour combinations. From there I was able to figure out where I wanted certain areas of density or space and things started to fall into place.”

“I would say there is a very strong link between the way I make paintings and the way that I approached making this award. They're different because of the format, but through the steps that I took, it was really inspiring to translate one way of working to another.”

“I feel like it’s my voice in the form of a trophy, it’s colourful and chaotic, and this was really important because all the other trophies were so distinctive, and you know immediately who made them. I’m really happy that what we’ve ended up with is a reflection of my visual language”.

Rachel joins an illustrious list of British artists and creative powerhouses  who for over ten years have been giving the BRIT awards status a different look and makeover; from Dame Vivienne Westood, Tracey Emin, Pam Hogg to Sir Phillip Treacy, Damien Hirst and Anish Kapoor. She inherits the honour from 2023 trophy designer Slawn.

Damian Christian, Managing Director and President of Promotions at Atlantic Records (part of Warner Music UK) and Chair of the BRIT Committee for 2024 said: “This year we once again wanted an exciting and progressive artist to capture the essence of the award. I was a massive fan of Rachel’s work and once I’d met her, she instantly became my number one choice to design 2024’s statue. I’m delighted she agreed to come on board and throw her artistic style behind the iconic trophy. Her design perfectly reflects the vibrant and spirited British music industry.”

R&B genre award introduced

The BRIT Awards today announce a new addition to the genre awards categories, which were first introduced in 2022. In 2024, R&B will be one of five genre awards, along with Alternative/Rock, Dance, Pop and Hip Hop/Grime/Rap, ensuring visibility for UK R&B artists at The BRIT Awards, with the five genre awards collectively showcasing the tremendous versatility, creativity and diverse musical styles of British music. Eligibility for the R&B Award will cover a 24-month period as opposed to the usual 12 months to ensure that artists that released music in those two years qualify and are eligible.

YolanDa Brown OBE DL, BPI Chair, said: “British music is special, the secret ingredient is its rich diversity of genre bending sounds created by the most eclectic artists of all backgrounds. It was this that prompted The BRIT Awards to introduce genre-based awards in 2022, and we are delighted to continue this with the addition of a new standalone R&B category to join the four other genres that we will celebrate in 2024. Our best wishes to all the artists who are eligible.”

Artist of the Year & International Artist of the Year

For 2024, The BRITs will increase the number of nominees for both Artist of the Year and International Artist of the Year from five, to ten.  This change, aimed at improving representation and inclusion, along with the introduction of the new R&B award, follows extensive consultation within the BRITs organisation, relevant industry and Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) groups, including the BPI’s own Equity & Justice Advisory Group (EJAG), and was a key part of The BRITs’ annual review of all show elements, following the 2023 ceremony. 

Dr. Jo Twist OBE, BPI Chief Executive said: “We look forward to celebrating another brilliant year in music, and we are all working hard to deliver another memorable show that will promote the incredible breadth of British and international talent that we have seen flourish and succeed over the past twelve months. The BRITs is committed to making the show as inclusive and representative as possible, the changes to this year’s categories are part of an ongoing process of evolution, and we will continue to review, listen and learn.”

The full category list for 2024 will be as follows:

1. Artist of the Year
2. Group of the Year
3. BRITs Rising Star
4. Best New Artist
5. Song of the Year with Mastercard
6. Mastercard Album of the Year
7. International Artist of the Year
8. International Song of the Year
9. International Group of the Year
10. Alternative/Rock Act
11. Pop Act
12. R&B Act
13. Dance Act
14. Hip Hop/Grime/Rap Act
15. Producer of the Year (honorary award as decided by a separate expert panel)
16. Songwriter of the Year (honorary award as decided by a separate expert panel)

The BRITs Voting Academy & Voting Eligibility

The BRITs Voting Academy, responsible for determining the shortlists and the overall winners for The BRIT Awards (bar Rising Star which is voted on by a separate panel), is refreshed annually, drawing on updated member data, to ensure relevance and diversity across its participants. The Voting Academy is composed of approx. 1200 individuals drawn from across the music industry, including artists, managers, media, producers, publishers, record labels, retailers and more. 

In 2024, The Voting Academy will again have a balanced split of men and women and will include a number of members who identify as non binary or who prefer not to specify their gender, whilst a quarter of its members identify as Black, Asian or ethnic minority background. The Academy and the voting process is overseen by Civica – an independent voting scrutineer.

Eligibility for the above categories (apart from Rising Star and the five genre awards) is achieved either by an artist album achieving a Top 40 place in the Official Albums Chart during the 12 month eligibility period (Friday 9th December 2022 – Friday 8th December 2023), or 2 x Top 20 singles in the Official Singles Chart. To be eligible for one of the genre awards, an artist must have released a Top 40 Album or Single in the same eligibility period, with the R&B award eligibility achieved over a 24 month period.

For each awards category, Voting Academy members select from a longlist of eligible entries. They will be able to select up to ten entries in the Artist of the Year categories (UK and International) and Song of the Year (UK and International), and up to 5 in all other categories.

BRITs Rising Star

The annual BRITs Rising Star award, now in its 16th year, will continue to identify the future stars of British music, having previously helped launch the careers of some of the biggest UK artists such as Adele, Sam Smith, Rag ‘N’ Bone Man, Florence + The Machine, Ellie Goulding, Sam Fender, Griff and last year’s winner, FLO. The award is open to British artists who, as of 31st October 2023, have not yet achieved an Official Album Charts Top 20 placing or achieved more than one Top 20 chart placing in the Official Singles Chart.