Polaris Music Prize
award
The Polaris Music Prize is an annual music award given to the best full-length Canadian album based on artistic merit, regardless of genre, sales, or record label. The award was established in 2006 with a $20,000 cash prize, which was increased to $30,000 in 2011. The prize was increased to $50,000 in May 2015 by Slaight Music. Second-place prizes for the nine other acts on the shortlist also increased from $2,000 to $3,000. The prize amount was reduced again to $30,000 in 2025 as various sponsors reduced their contributions.
Polaris officials announced the Slaight Family Polaris Heritage Prize, an award that "will annually honour five albums from the five decades before Polaris launched in 2006."
The prize, modeled on the United Kingdom and Ireland's Mercury Prize, inspired the Atlantis and Borealis Music Prizes for Newfoundland and Labrador.
The Polaris committee and SOCAN announced the creation of the SOCAN Polaris Song Prize, honouring individual songs in addition to the albums award, in 2025. It replaced the SOCAN Songwriting Prize.
Jury and selection
There is no submission process or entry fee for the prize, and jurors select what they consider the five best Canadian albums released in the previous year. Ballots are tabulated with each number-one pick awarded five points and a number-two pick awarded four points.
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This entry incorporates text from “Polaris Music Prize” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.