2026 Rock n Roll Hall Of Fame winners

The Class of 2026 has been announced and we’re looking forward to watching the induction ceremony in November.

You needed to sign up, with your email to be able to cast a fan vote. Fans were able to vote for each artist max 1 per day, but you could vote again and again each day.

We kept an eye on it and checked in every few days on The Breakfast Club to see how it was going. Phil Collins dominated early, New Edition surged toward the end. It was a bit of fun – we played music by EVERY SINGLE nominee this year which was a first for us, so the anticipation on the winners was palpable!

Then they announced the winners, but there is something strange happening as the fan vote paints a vastly different picture to the announced winners, and that got us scratching our heads.

Why have fan votes if it’s essentially meaningless?

The Rock Hall introduced the fan vote in 2012 where “the top five to seven vote-getters in the annual online Fan Vote form one ballot”.

COS wrote an article about it too, so it’s not just us.

From the perspective of the fans, I don’t think this is quite the participation they were hoping for. At best, their votes are being used for engagement and to collect email addresses. – Kiana, Consequence Of Sound

Huh? So of millions of votes, fans only get 1 vote with our top 7 artists. Our votes are then added to a pool of other voters.

Who are the other voters?

They are a closed committee of approx 1200 historians, members of the music industry and artists—including every living Rock Hall inductee. They all submit their votes, the Rock Hall includes our 7 votes, and by ballot the actual winners are determined.

If the Rock Hall can better explain this weighting, we’d greatly appreciate it. It doesn’t seem balanced given in 2026 there were over 7 million fan votes.

We don’t know how many “fans” signed up with their email addresses to be able to participate, but we doubt each of the 1200 closed voters chosen by the Rock Hall, did not vote more than once. Our weighting in the end results feels like it doesn’t make a difference somehow,  a bit like adding 1 grain of sugar to a cup of coffee.

It’s not clear at this stage why you’re gaming us, but we have noticed.