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Every Great Polaris Music Prize Winner, Ranked

A ranking of Polaris Music Prize winning albums from 2006 through the September 2026 winner, judged on how well each record holds up now, its influence, and whether it rewards a full front-to-back listen. Fourteen of the twenty winners are ranked; Buffy Sainte-Marie's 2015 win was rescinded by Polaris in 2025 and is not included. For listeners who want a Canadian album canon from the past two decades.

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GGaspard Laflamme

14 entriesAdded Oct 17, 2026

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Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

The 2010 album that won both the Polaris and the Grammy for album of the year is a sprawling, 16-track meditation on growing up in the sprawl. Sprawl II remains one of the decade's great singles. Allegations against Win Butler reported in 2022 changed how many fans relate to the band; the album's place in Canadian music history is not in dispute.

4 pros · 2 cons

Caribou - Andorra

Dan Snaith, a math PhD from Dundas, Ontario, made this 2007 record of sun-drenched psychedelic pop with layered harmonies and drum fills straight from the 60s. It is the sound of a producer before he went fully electronic on Swim and Our Love. Melody Day still sounds like a summer morning.

4 pros · 2 cons

Jeremy Dutcher - Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa

Classically trained tenor Jeremy Dutcher found wax-cylinder recordings of Wolastoqey songs from 1907 in the Canadian Museum of History and composed around them, singing with his ancestors. Released in 2018, it is in a language with only a few hundred fluent speakers. He became the first two-time winner in 2024 with Motewolonuwok.

4 pros · 2 cons

Kaytranada - 99.9%

Montreal producer Louis Kevin Celestin's 2016 debut is a guest-heavy dance and R&B record (Anderson .Paak, Craig David, BadBadNotGood, Syd) held together by his loose, swung drum programming. It made him a producer every artist wanted, and he later won Grammys. Still the best party album on this list.

4 pros · 2 cons

Feist - Metals

After 1234 made her a household name, Leslie Feist went the other way in 2011: a darker, more rustic record built on horns, choirs and big drums, recorded largely live on the California coast. How Come You Never Go There and The Bad in Each Other are the way in. Harder than The Reminder; better, too.

4 pros · 2 cons

Tanya Tagaq - Animism

Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq's 2014 album fuses improvised katajjaq with violin, drums and electronics, including a cover of the Pixies' Caribou. Her Polaris performance, with the names of missing and murdered Indigenous women scrolling behind her, is one of the great live moments in Canadian music.

4 pros · 2 cons

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - 'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!

The Montreal collective's 2012 comeback, its first album in a decade, is two 20-minute pieces and two drones built from songs they had played live for years. Mladic is the most ferocious thing they have recorded. The band donated the prize money to music programs in Quebec prisons and criticised the gala, which was very on brand.

4 pros · 2 cons

Angine de Poitrine - Vol. II

The newest winner, crowned at Massey Hall on September 22, 2026. A masked microtonal math-rock duo from Saguenay, Quebec, Khn on a double-neck guitar-bass and Klek on drums, who claim to be 333-year-old aliens. They also took the SOCAN Polaris Song Prize for Fabienk, the first act to win both in one year. Ranked provisionally; it is weeks old.

4 pros · 2 cons

Patrick Watson - Close to Paradise

The first winner to really surprise people beat Arcade Fire's Neon Bible and Feist's The Reminder in 2007 with this cinematic, piano-led record from the Montreal band. The Great Escape has been in countless film and TV scenes. Lush and dreamy; it set the tone for the prize rewarding atmosphere over buzz.

4 pros · 2 cons

Fucked Up - The Chemistry of Common Life

Toronto hardcore band Fucked Up won in 2009 with a 2008 album that adds flutes, layered guitars and 9-minute songs to Damian Abraham's roar. Proof that the prize could reward the loud and the abrasive, and a record that converted plenty of listeners who thought they did not like hardcore.

4 pros · 2 cons

Karkwa - Les chemins de verre

Montreal band Karkwa's 2010 album was the first francophone record to win, beating Broken Social Scene, Owen Pallett and Caribou in 2010. Moody, textured art-rock in the Radiohead lineage, with Louis-Jean Cormier's songwriting at its best. Many English-Canadian listeners discovered Quebec rock through this win.

4 pros · 2 cons

Lido Pimienta - La Papessa

Colombian-Canadian Lido Pimienta self-released this 2016 album of electronic cumbia, Afro-Colombian rhythm and feminist, anti-colonial lyrics, sung in Spanish. She was the first winner to sing in Spanish, and her win speech is part of its story. Bold production on a small budget.

4 pros · 2 cons

Pierre Kwenders - Jose Louis and the Paradox of Love

Kinshasa-born, Montreal-based Pierre Kwenders blends Congolese rumba, house and R&B, singing in Lingala, French, English and Tshiluba. The 2022 album is warm, danceable and quietly about love and identity. Another win for Montreal's cross-cultural club scene, which he helped build with the Moonshine parties.

4 pros · 2 cons

Debby Friday - Good Luck

Nigerian-born, Montreal-raised Debby Friday's 2023 debut on Sub Pop jumps between industrial, punk, rap and pop with total conviction. Abrasive and catchy at once, it is one of the most confident debuts ever to win. Treat it as the gateway to a much louder corner of Canadian music than the prize usually rewards.

4 pros · 2 cons

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