The Latin Grammy Best Merengue/Bachata Category Has No Bachata in It and Prince Royce Called It Out Publicly

Prince Royce is not someone who typically makes noise for the sake of it, which is part of why his public criticism of this year’s Latin Grammy nominations landed with the force that it did. The New York-born Dominican singer took to Instagram to call out the Recording Academy for nominating zero bachata albums in the best merengue/bachata album category, pointing out that approximately only fifteen percent of the music in the nominated projects is actually bachata. The nominations in that category for the November 12th ceremony in Las Vegas are “Música para bailar” by Fariana, “Todo llega” by Manerra, “No era el plan” by Gabriel Pagán, “Oye eta vaina” by Covi Quintana and “Chula” by Techy, a slate that Royce argues misrepresents the genre the category is supposed to celebrate.

His post came one day after the Latin Recording Academy announced its full list of nominations for 2026, a list that does not include Prince Royce anywhere on it. His best shot at a nomination had been “Better Late Than Never,” his collaboration with Romeo Santos, but the track did not make the cut. Royce has accumulated fifteen career Latin Grammy nominations and has never won, which adds a layer of context to the criticism without diminishing it.

The Difference Between Being Dominican and Representing Bachata

The most precise and important part of Royce’s critique was the distinction he drew between nationality and genre, and it deserves to be taken seriously on its own terms rather than filtered through the lens of whether he had a personal stake in the outcome. He wrote that having Dominican artists nominated does not automatically mean that bachata is represented, and made the case that being Dominican is a nationality while bachata is a genre, a culture and a history with its own identity. That distinction matters because the category exists to celebrate a specific musical tradition, and if the nominations in that category are primarily merengue projects with a small percentage of bachata content, the category is not doing what it is supposed to do.

Royce was careful to say he did not want to diminish merengue as a genre, framing his concern as a question about representation rather than a competition between the two styles. He asked directly where the bachata representation was, which is the kind of question that cuts through the diplomatic language that usually surrounds award season discourse and gets to the actual problem the nominations present for a genre that has had a massive global moment over the last several years.

The Latin Grammys as a Popularity Contest

Beyond the specific category issue, Royce raised a broader concern about the direction the Latin Grammys have taken as an institution, describing them as having become a popularity contest within the industry where relationships, campaigns and personal connections carry as much influence as the music itself. He argued that the awards should not be a space where those factors outweigh the quality and cultural relevance of the work being recognized, which is a criticism that surfaces every awards season across every genre but rarely gets stated this plainly by an artist with as much to lose from saying it publicly as Royce does.

Prince Royce is considered one of the most influential figures in modern bachata, a genre that has traveled from its roots in the Dominican Republic to become a global phenomenon with dedicated audiences across the United States, Latin America and Europe. His criticism of the nominations is not the grievance of an outsider looking in but the observation of someone who has spent his career inside the genre the category is named after. Whether the Latin Recording Academy responds to the critique with any kind of transparency about its nomination process remains to be seen, but the conversation Royce has started is one the institution will need to engage with seriously if it wants the best merengue/bachata category to mean what it claims to mean.