Noel Gallagher Named BRITs Songwriter of the Year 2026
The BRIT Awards named Noel Gallagher Songwriter of the Year for 2026, at the first ceremony held outside London. Oasis also outsold every UK act.
The BRIT Awards named Noel Gallagher Songwriter of the Year for 2026, the ceremony announced on 5 February. He collected the award in person at Co-op Live in Manchester on 28 February 2026, in his home city.
The venue choice carried its own headline. The BRITs held the ceremony outside London for the first time in nearly 50 years of history. Jack Whitehall hosted the night, and Manchester gave its most famous songwriter a homecoming crowd.
The award itself is a young one. The BRITs introduced Songwriter of the Year in 2022, and Ed Sheeran took the first edition. Kid Harpoon, RAYE and Charli XCX followed him onto the list.
Songwriter awards usually honour a single year of hits. This one rewards a catalogue that has sat inside British life for three decades. The committee judged endurance, and endurance is the reunionâs whole story in one word.
Committee chair Stacey Tang explained the 2026 choice in generous terms. She praised songs that have âbecome part of our collective storyâ. Wonderwall, Live Forever and Donât Look Back in Anger now sit in that category for at least two generations.
Meanwhile, the sales figures behind the award stunned even the organisers. The BRITs noted that Oasis sold over one million albums in the UK during 2025. No other UK artist reached that mark in the reunion year.
At one point in 2025, the catalogue held three of the UK album Top 5 at once. Time Flies sat at No.1 and Morning Glory held No.2. Definitely Maybe completed the set at No.4, thirty years after its release.
Catalogue sales at that scale change record label maths. Morning Glory and Definitely Maybe now sell like current releases, week after week. Younger fans discover the records through the reunion coverage and buy them like new albums.
Jack Whitehallâs hosting gave the night a mainstream frame. A comedian fronting the show put the Gallaghersâ year in front of viewers who never buy music magazines. The award clip travelled across social media within the hour.
For context, Noel greeted the honour with a songwriterâs grumble. He joked on talkSPORT: âI havenât written a song for two yearsâ. Fans have since logged his 2026 studio sessions, which rather undermine the acceptance speech.
The award lands inside a longer Manchester story. The Oasis Manchester 2027 run brings the band home for eleven Etihad Stadium nights in June 2027. The Co-op Live ceremony gave the city a rehearsal for its year of Gallagher attention.
The Oasis awards record now spans three decades of industry honours. Few songwriters collect a career award while their old band sells out 42 stadiums in the same era. Noel currently does both at once.
The joke points straight at the Oasis new album debate. Noel insists the well is dry in public while his own studio diary quietly fills with sessions through 2026. Fans read the contradiction as classic Noel: deny everything, deliver later.
Manchester gains a second celebration from the same season. Co-op Live sits across the city from the Etihad, where eleven June nights await in 2027. The ceremony crowd and the stadium crowd will overlap heavily when summer comes.
The BRITs themselves gain from the association too. A Manchester ceremony, a hometown hero and a reunion year gave the show its strongest story. Awards bodies chase relevance, and nobody in British music held more of it this year.
That said, the honour really belongs to the catalogue. The Oasis Live â27 lineup takes those songs back on the road in May 2027. A Songwriter of the Year award, judged on work from 1994 onward, simply confirms what the ballot numbers already said.