Ivor Novello award nominees reflect gender disparity in British and Irish songwriters, with twice as many men as women

Olivia Dean, Wolf Alice’s Ellie Rowsell, Jacob Alon, Self Esteem and Kae Tempest lead this year’s Ivors, with two nominations each

Olivia Dean, Ellie Rowsell of Wolf Alice, Jacob Alon, Self Esteem and Kae Tempest lead this year’s Ivor Novello awards for excellence in British and Irish songwriting, with two nominations apiece. Self Esteem’s cowriter Johan Hugo, and Tempest’s Fraser T Smith, are also credited among the leading acts.

Tempest will go up against himself in the best contemporary song category, with two nominations: one for I Stand on the Line, written with Smith, and one for Know Yourself, written with Smith and Tom Rowlands of the Chemical Brothers. Both songs come from Tempest’s fifth album, Self Titled.

The nominations reveal the gender disparity in British and Irish music: there are more than twice as many male nominees (40) than female (19), with two non-binary artists making up the 61 songwriters and composers recognised.

Research by the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative at the University of Southern California found that the number of female songwriters across the 1,400 most popular songs of the year had starkly decreased from 18.9% in 2024 to 14.5% in 2025.