The 26-year-old dominates in Manchester, landing the night’s biggest prizes as Rosé, Wolf Alice and Mark Ronson also take top honours

Olivia Dean was the big winner at the 2026 Brit awards, taking home awards for artist of the year, pop act, song of the year for her Sam Fender duet Rein Me In, and album of the year for The Art of Loving.

In less than a year, Dean has leaped to the forefront of British pop thanks to The Art of Loving, her second album. With songs that get to the heart of the joys and frustrations of casual modern dating, she is enormously relatable, while her sophisticated and cosmopolitan songcraft, deftly finessing styles such as bossa nova, trip-hop, neo-soul and jazz together, has given her an unusually broad and cross-generational appeal.

Lewisham MC Fekky went from collaborating with Skepta to buying his own farm – without ever having set foot on one. Hood 2 Farm sees him trying to learn the skills, and turning his wild, slapstick journey into hilarious TV

In Hood 2 Farm, a 76-year-old shepherd is explaining his daily routine. “There’s only my wife and I, and when she gets out of bed, I get in, and when I get out of bed, she gets in,” he says. The south London rapper Fekky pauses, before saying: “If you don’t mind me asking, if she’s getting out of bed, you’re getting in bed, when are you … hugging up , man?” The farmer laughs and replies: “It’s not happening, chap!” to Fekky’s clear horror.

This kind of interaction is common on Hood 2 Farm, a unique and genuinely inspired YouTube series about the rapper’s attempt to become the steward of his own farm. Across eight 30-minute episodes, he meets farmers from around the UK and learns basics such as milking cows, shearing sheep and driving tractors.

Other stage
Filling in last minute after Deftones pulled out, the Londoner shows he’s still top of his game with a kinetic performance that jumps from garage to grime to Fred Again bangers

The Glastonbury “surprise set” has proved futile this year – anonymous billings for Lorde , Haim and Lewis Capaldi were leaked long before the gates opened. Yet there manages to be a genuine twist in the lineup: grime legend Skepta, as a last-minute replacement for alt-metal band Deftones, who have been forced to cancel due to illness. Skepta happens to be kicking around because last night, at Glade, he performed a DJ set alongside Mochakk from São Paulo and Carlita from Istanbul – an advertisement of his house-techno project Más Tiempo, launched with Jammer in 2023, with regular slots in Ibiza.

But he’d not required the full force of his production for Glade, so stepping in for a billing just shy of the headline slot on Glastonbury’s second largest stage, Other, is certainly a challenge. On that, of course, Skepta steps up to the plate with incredible energy and conviction, saying “Let’s go!!! No crew, no production but am ready to shut Glastonbury down. Victory lap time. Pre-Big Smoke 2025!” (his multi-genre festival taking place at Crystal Palace Bowl, south London, in August.)