Despite picking up album of the year and best country album for Cowboy Carter at the 2025 Grammys, Beyoncé has been snubbed by a country music awards program… again.
The nominations for the 2025 Academy of Country Music Awards were unveiled on Thursday, and Beyoncé’s name was notably left off the list. This isn’t the first time, however, as the cultural icon was also snubbed by the 2024 CMA Awards this past year.
Beyoncé’s chart-topping Cowboy Carter was one of the biggest country albums of 2024, and her Grammy wins were proof. While she was already the most-awarded Grammy artist in history prior to this past Grammy season, she’d long been shut out of wins for the major Grammy categories until she finally won album of the year at the 2025 ceremony in February. She also became the first Black woman to win the best country album Grammy for Cowboy Carter.
Several of her country songs from the album also scored Grammy nominations, including “Texas Hold ‘Em,” “Levii’s Jeans” (featuring Post Malone), “16 Carriages” and “II MOST WANTED” (featuring Miley Cyrus), the latter of which also won best country duo/group performance.
As for the ACM Awards, album of the year nominees included Megan Moroney’s Am I Okay? (I’ll Be Fine), Jelly Roll’s Beautifully Broken, Zach Top’s Cold Beer & Country Music, Post Malone’s F-1 Trillion and Lainey Wilson’s Whirlwind. This year’s nominees for female artist of the year were Moroney, Wilson, Kelsea Ballerini, Ella Langley and Kacey Musgraves.
ACM CEO Damon Whiteside addressed the snub in an interview with Billboard on Thursday. “Were we hoping she’d be nominated? Absolutely,” Whiteside told the publication. “We love that Beyoncé is in the country genre.”
Whiteside said that Beyoncé had “an open invitation to be on the ACM stage anytime she ever wants to.”
Some observers have previously tried to justify Beyoncé’s lack of nominations at country music awards programs to her not a frequent artist in the space, as her discography has mainly been pop and R&B albums in the past. The same could be said about Malone, who did receive multiple nominations at both the CMA Awards and ACM Awards for his country debut F-1 Trillion.
Last year, Luke Bryan weighed in on the discourse surrounding Beyoncé‘s lack of CMA Award nominations, suggesting that Beyoncé didn’t get any nods because she hadn’t enmeshed herself enough with the broader country music industry.
“Everybody loved that Beyoncé made a country album. Nobody’s mad about it,” Bryan said at the time. “But where things get a little tricky — if you’re gonna make country albums, come into our world and be country with us a little bit. Like, Beyoncé can do exactly what she wants to. She’s probably the biggest star in music. But come to an award show and high-five us and have fun and get in the family, too. And I’m not saying she didn’t do that … but country music is a lot about family.”
Bryan later clarified that he never had any “negative” intentions with his comments. “I respect Beyonce and I love how loyal her fans are. I spend a lot of time supporting other artists. I want everyone to win. Love yall,” he said.
Kelly Clarkson has also previously shared her confusion over Beyoncé’s CMA Awards snub. “I kind of find it fascinating,” she said in an interview with NBC10 Boston last year, “because I feel like those songs were everywhere.”
Prior to releasing Cowboy Carter, Beyoncé explained that the album was more than five years in the making and spawned from not feeling “welcomed” in the country music space after facing criticism when trying to enter the genre years before.
“It was very clear that I wasn’t,” she wrote on Instagram at the time. “But, because of that experience, I did a deeper dive into the history of Country music and studied our rich musical archive. It feels good to see how music can unite so many people around the world, while also amplifying the voices of some of the people who have dedicated so much of their lives educating on our musical history.”
Beyoncé continued, “This genre forced me to propel past the limitations that were put on me. act ii is a result of challenging myself, and taking my time to bend and blend genres together to create this body of work.”
The ACM Awards producer Dick Clark Productions is owned by Penske Media Eldridge, a joint venture between Penske Media Corporation and Eldridge that also owns The Hollywood Reporter.
