Hollywood Music in Media Awards 2026: the film song and score nominees before November 18

The Hollywood Music in Media Awards, which honor original songs and scores written for films, television, video games, trailers and advertising, hand out their 17th set of prizes on Wednesday, November 18, 2026, at the Avalon in Hollywood. HMMA’s list of 2026 nominations, read on November 15, runs to more than 30 categories, and this guide covers the main film categories. By our count, five films have three nominations each: The Odyssey, Tony Gilroy’s Behemoth!, Antoine Fuqua’s Michael, Ari Gold’s Brother Verses Brother and Don Hardy’s documentary Linda Perry: Let It Die Here.

The Odyssey’s three are for its song, its score and the music video for the song, directed by Travis Scott. Behemoth! has a song, a score and a place in the music-themed film category. Michael is nominated for Jaafar Jackson’s onscreen performance of “Bad,” for its music supervision and as a music-themed film. Brother Verses Brother has Ethan Gold’s song “Brothers Keep Goin’ Anyway,” his onscreen performance of it and a music-themed film nomination, and Linda Perry: Let It Die Here has her song “What Lies With You,” her onscreen performance and a nomination as a music documentary.

The feature film song race

Six songs are up for the feature film song award. Two come from films that also have a feature film score nomination: “When I’m Home” from The Odyssey, whose writers include the film’s composer, Ludwig Göransson, and Christopher Nolan, and “Your God Is Sleeping” from Behemoth!, written by Lukas Frank. A third, “Draw You Out,” written by Noah Kahan and Aaron Dessner for The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, has company in the sci-fi and fantasy score field, where James Newton Howard is nominated for the same film. Our guide to the Hunger Games films in order covers the series.

The score categories

HMMA splits film scores by kind of film. The feature film field includes Göransson for The Odyssey, Carter Burwell for Wild Horse Nine and Damon Albarn for Artificial, and the sci-fi and fantasy field has John Williams for Disclosure Day, Hans Zimmer for Dune: Part Three and Michael Giacchino for Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Giacchino is in the animated field as well, for Ray Gunn, alongside Randy Newman for Toy Story 5 and Kris Bowers for Hexed. The documentary field includes Ari Balouzian’s music for You Can See Everything, and Balouzian is also nominated for the independent film Primetime.

Names that recur

By our count, HMMA’s list credits Daniel Pemberton in four nominations: the scores for Project Hail Mary and The Drama, the documentary song “Let Me Sell You a Dream” from Musk, written with David Byrne, and the TV score for Slow Horses with Toydrum. Kris Bowers is credited three times, for Hexed, the documentary The Eyes of Ghana and the series Spider-Noir, the last with Michael Dean Parsons. Jack Antonoff appears twice among the songwriters, for Taylor Swift’s “I Knew It, I Knew You” from Toy Story 5 and for Phoebe Bridgers’s “On Video” from Primetime, written with Christian Lee Hutson.

Other film categories

The independent film song field includes Beck’s “Hollywood Man” from Billy Knight and Jesse Eisenberg’s song for The Debut, “This City May Have Chewed Me Up (But It Hasn’t Spit Me Out),” sung by Julianne Moore, who is also nominated for onscreen performance. The onscreen performance field’s fifth nominee, with Moore, Jackson, Gold and Perry, is Nick Jonas, for a song in Power Ballad. In the animated song field, the Backstreet Boys perform “Bottle Up” from PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie and the Decemberists “The Better Part of Bravery” from Wildwood. The documentary song nominees include Kylie Minogue’s “Light Up” from Kylie.

The music supervision award for films lists 40 Watts From Nowhere, Michael, Mr. Irrelevant, The Devil Wears Prada 2, Tony and Wuthering Heights. A category for music-themed films, biopics and musicals names Behemoth!, Brother Verses Brother, Descendants: Wicked Wonderland, Michael and The Muppet Show, each with its director.

How the winners are chosen

Winners are decided by the Hollywood Music in Media Academy, which HMMA calls its official voting body. The vote is internal and confidential, and results are revealed only at the ceremony and made public afterward. Academy voting usually opens when the final nominations are announced and closes about a week before the show. HMMA’s standard eligibility period covers work released from January 1 to December 31 of the current year, and HMMA says it can review films not yet released through festival screenings, secure online links or screeners; by our reading, that is how titles still to open this year can compete. HMMA also says its nominations have “historically been representative” of the nominees that key awards shows announce months later, a claim we have not tested.