Jacob Alon Wins Rising Star and Best Song at 2026 Ivor Novello Awards

Jacob Alon left the 2026 Ivor Novello awards with two prizes that confirm the weight of their early catalog. The 25-year-old Scottish singer-songwriter won rising star and best song musically and lyrically for “Don’t Fall Asleep,” a ballad that turns a personal family loss into something measured and precise.

The song imagines Alon’s cousin, who died in an accidental drowning before Alon was born, waking under water and being led by an angel to witness his unborn son’s arrival. Alon described it as “floats across the stormy surface of the sea of dreams, gasping against its choppy tide, resisting the soft pull below into an endless deep.” The judges called it “profoundly emotionally honest.”

Alon’s rise has been cumulative. They already took the Brit awards’ critics’ choice prize this year, and their debut album In Limerence, released in May 2025, earned a Mercury nomination. The Ivor Novello win for best song puts a finer point on what listeners have been responding to: a direct, literate writing style, carried by a voice that slips between folk fragility and something more theatrical.

Elsewhere at the ceremony, Sam Fender was named songwriter of the year for his album People Watching, while Rosalía won international songwriter for Lux. CMAT took best album for Euro-Country, and Kae Tempest won best contemporary song for “I Stand on the Line.” Lola Young’s “Messy,” a slow-burn hit that spent four weeks at No. 1 in early 2025, won most performed work.