Cardiff Hits the Right Note as Music City Festival Builds Towards Welsh Music Prize
CARDIFF is spending October living up to its claim as a music city — and one of the biggest nights in the Welsh music calendar is now just hours away.
The Cardiff Music City Festival is in full swing, bringing two weeks of live performances, emerging talent, international artists, talks, installations and special events to venues across the capital.
Running until October 17, the festival has grown rapidly since its launch in 2024 and now acts as an umbrella for some of the biggest fixtures in the Welsh music calendar, including Llais, Sŵn Festival and the Welsh Music Prize.
And tomorrow night, attention turns to the Wales Millennium Centre, where one of 15 shortlisted albums will be named winner of the 2026 Welsh Music Prize.
Founded in 2011, the prize celebrates music made in Wales or by Welsh artists around the world, and this year’s shortlist once again demonstrates just how difficult Welsh music is to pigeonhole.
There is reggae from Aleighcia Scott, alternative rock from CHROMA, folk and traditional influences from Cerys Hafana and Mari Mathias, rap from Cardiff artist Local, the distinctive guitar work of Gwenifer Raymond, established names including Gruff Rhys and Skindred, and emerging acts competing alongside artists already recognised internationally.
The full shortlist is:
ADJUA – Everything Is Beautiful
Aleighcia Scott – Taith
Ani Glass – Phantasmagoria
Art School Girlfriend – Lean In
Cerys Hafana – Angel
CHROMA – 25 Forever
Dafydd Owain – Ymarfer Byw
Dewin – Dan y Dderwen
Gruff Rhys – Dim Probs
Gwenifer Raymond – Last Night I Heard the Dog Star Bark
Local – Too Broke to Be This Busy
Mari Mathias – Cyfarwydd
Skindred – You Got This
The Bug Club – Every Single Muscle
The Royston Club – Songs For The Spine.
The winner receives £10,000, but the significance of the prize stretches well beyond the money. For emerging artists particularly, a place on the shortlist can bring national attention to music that might otherwise struggle to break through beyond Wales.
This year’s ceremony will be hosted by BBC Radio 1 presenter Sian Eleri, with live performances from shortlisted artists ADJUA, Local, Dafydd Owain and Gwenifer Raymond.
They will be joined by emerging artists Mwsog, Casual Smart and Betsan, recipients of this year’s Triskel Awards, together with jazz-influenced R&B duo Papaya Noon, recipients of the PPL Momentum Sbardun Accelerator Fund award.
The ceremony will also be broadcast live on BBC Radio Wales and BBC Radio Cymru.
The Welsh Music Prize is only one piece of a much bigger musical jigsaw currently spread across Cardiff.
Llais, based around Wales Millennium Centre, begins tomorrow and runs until October 11, while Sŵn Festival takes over venues across the city from October 15–17, once again concentrating heavily on new and emerging music.
Elsewhere, there are events ranging from experimental performances and installations to gigs in independent venues, while one particularly interesting strand looks backwards as well as forwards.
Resonant Places – Revisiting Cardiff’s Lost Music Venues explores some of the spaces that helped create the city’s musical identity but have disappeared from the landscape — a reminder that being a genuine “music city” is not simply about attracting major performers but preserving the smaller venues where musicians are given the chance to develop in the first place.
That grassroots element is important.
Last year’s Cardiff Music City Festival featured more than 1,000 musicians across 20 grassroots venues, including more than 270 Welsh or Wales-based performers. Organisers say the festival forms part of Cardiff Council’s longer-term strategy to protect and strengthen the city’s music ecosystem.
There is an interesting contrast here with the Cardiff most visitors see.
The Principality Stadium can attract some of the world’s biggest touring acts, but a healthy musical city cannot live on stadium concerts alone. It needs rehearsal spaces, independent venues, promoters, small audiences willing to discover unfamiliar performers and, crucially, opportunities for young artists to make that difficult jump from bedroom, garage or local pub to professional career.
Cardiff Music City Festival is increasingly attempting to join those pieces together.
And the Welsh Music Prize perhaps provides its most visible shop window.
Tomorrow night one album will win.
The more encouraging story may be that Wales can assemble a shortlist of 15 records covering such vastly different sounds and still leave plenty of worthy contenders outside it.
For a country that has spent generations describing itself as the Land of Song, that seems rather appropriate.
DID EWE KNOW? The first Welsh Music Prize was awarded in 2011 to Gruff Rhys for Hotel Shampoo. Fifteen years later, Rhys is back on the shortlist with Dim Probs and therefore has the unusual opportunity to become champion again a decade and a half after winning the inaugural award.