Does Paul McCartney's The Boys of Dungeon Lane win the Mercury Prize on 22 Oct 2026?
BinaryResolves 22 Oct 2026
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Yes
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Resolved
Resolved: NO
The Mercury Prize announced on 22 October 2026 that Raye won with This Music May Contain Hope, so Paul McCartney's The Boys of Dungeon Lane did not win, as BBC News also reported.
Resolved 22 Oct 2026
How this resolves
(adjacent). the same announcement on mercuryprize.com; YES only if the winning album is The Boys of Dungeon Lane credited to Paul McCartney. If that source has not published in time, BBC News and the Guardian settle it.
The pattern behind it
4 of 8
Four of the last eight Mercury winners had been shortlisted in the five years before they won: Wolf Alice (2015, won 2018), Michael Kiwanuka (2016, won 2020), Little Simz (2019, won 2022) and Sam Fender (2022, won 2025). The other four, Dave, Arlo Parks, Ezra Collective and English Teacher, were first-time nominees, three of them with debut albums. Four of this year's twelve meet the same test, so the record says returning nominees are neither favoured nor punished; it also says the prize does not reward persistence on its own.
Four of the last eight winners had been on the list before. We checked each winner from 2018 to 2025 in the BBC's report of the ceremony, and asked whether the artist had been shortlisted in the five years before. Over the whole history of the prize, the BBC notes that twenty of its 34 winners to 2025 won with a first album.
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