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Polaris Music Prize
The Polaris Music Prize is an annual music award given to the best full-length Canadian album based on artistic merit, regardless of genre, sales, or record label. The award was established in 2006 with a $20,000 cash prize, which was increased to $30,000 in 2011. The prize was increased to $50,000 in May 2015 by Slaight Music. Second-place prizes for the nine other acts on the shortlist also increased from $2,000 to $3,000. Polaris officials announced the Slaight Family Polaris Heritage Prize, an award that "will annually honour five albums from the five decades before Polaris launched in 2006."
The prize, modeled on the United Kingdom and Ireland's Mercury Prize, inspired the Atlantis and Borealis Music Prizes for Newfoundland and Labrador.
The Polaris committee and SOCAN announced the creation of the SOCAN Polaris Song Prize, honouring individual songs in addition to the albums award, in 2025. It replaced the SOCAN Songwriting Prize.
There is no submission process or entry fee for the prize, and jurors select what they consider the five best Canadian albums released in the previous year. Ballots are tabulated with each number-one pick awarded five points and a number-two pick awarded four points. A list of 40 titles is released in mid-June and sent back to the jury, which re-submits five top picks.
Ballots are re-tabulated and the top ten titles are the Polaris short list, which is released in early July. A group of 11 jurors (the "Grand Jury") meets in Toronto in late September to choose the winner. The nominated artists (or bands) perform, and the winner is announced by the previous year's winner. Each shortlisted album has one grand juror to advocate for it; ten jurors are selected for naming a shortlisted album as their top pick in the balloting, and the remaining juror did not vote for any shortlisted albums.
The Polaris Music Prize board of directors selects the jurors from a list of over 200 Canadian music journalists, bloggers, and broadcasters. No one with a direct financial relationship with an artist can be a jury member. Enlisting music journalists, broadcasters and bloggers as judges attracts attention to good music in a cluttered commercial landscape and a fractured music scene. Former CBC Q host and first Polaris Gala host Jian Ghomeshi was quietly removed from the juror pool on November 3, 2014.
The Polaris jury introduced the Polaris Heritage Prize (later known as the Slaight Family Polaris Heritage Prize), an annual award program to honour classic Canadian albums released before the creation of the Polaris Prize, in 2015.
Heritage Prizes, selected by public vote from a shortlist of five nominees by a Heritage Prize jury, were awarded in their first year in the 1960s–1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000–2005 categories. In the second year, the shortlists were increased to 10, the categories shifted to 1960–75, 1976–85, 1986–1995 and 1996–2005, and a second prize was awarded by a jury with the winner of the public vote. The jury award ensures that albums which were artistically important but not necessarily commercially popular have a fair chance of winning; the jury does not meet to make its choice until after the popular-vote winner has been determined.
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Polaris Music Prize
The Polaris Music Prize is an annual music award given to the best full-length Canadian album based on artistic merit, regardless of genre, sales, or record label. The award was established in 2006 with a $20,000 cash prize, which was increased to $30,000 in 2011. The prize was increased to $50,000 in May 2015 by Slaight Music. Second-place prizes for the nine other acts on the shortlist also increased from $2,000 to $3,000. Polaris officials announced the Slaight Family Polaris Heritage Prize, an award that "will annually honour five albums from the five decades before Polaris launched in 2006."
The prize, modeled on the United Kingdom and Ireland's Mercury Prize, inspired the Atlantis and Borealis Music Prizes for Newfoundland and Labrador.
The Polaris committee and SOCAN announced the creation of the SOCAN Polaris Song Prize, honouring individual songs in addition to the albums award, in 2025. It replaced the SOCAN Songwriting Prize.
There is no submission process or entry fee for the prize, and jurors select what they consider the five best Canadian albums released in the previous year. Ballots are tabulated with each number-one pick awarded five points and a number-two pick awarded four points. A list of 40 titles is released in mid-June and sent back to the jury, which re-submits five top picks.
Ballots are re-tabulated and the top ten titles are the Polaris short list, which is released in early July. A group of 11 jurors (the "Grand Jury") meets in Toronto in late September to choose the winner. The nominated artists (or bands) perform, and the winner is announced by the previous year's winner. Each shortlisted album has one grand juror to advocate for it; ten jurors are selected for naming a shortlisted album as their top pick in the balloting, and the remaining juror did not vote for any shortlisted albums.
The Polaris Music Prize board of directors selects the jurors from a list of over 200 Canadian music journalists, bloggers, and broadcasters. No one with a direct financial relationship with an artist can be a jury member. Enlisting music journalists, broadcasters and bloggers as judges attracts attention to good music in a cluttered commercial landscape and a fractured music scene. Former CBC Q host and first Polaris Gala host Jian Ghomeshi was quietly removed from the juror pool on November 3, 2014.
The Polaris jury introduced the Polaris Heritage Prize (later known as the Slaight Family Polaris Heritage Prize), an annual award program to honour classic Canadian albums released before the creation of the Polaris Prize, in 2015.
Heritage Prizes, selected by public vote from a shortlist of five nominees by a Heritage Prize jury, were awarded in their first year in the 1960s–1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000–2005 categories. In the second year, the shortlists were increased to 10, the categories shifted to 1960–75, 1976–85, 1986–1995 and 1996–2005, and a second prize was awarded by a jury with the winner of the public vote. The jury award ensures that albums which were artistically important but not necessarily commercially popular have a fair chance of winning; the jury does not meet to make its choice until after the popular-vote winner has been determined.