Chxrry will accept the 2026 Billboard Canada Rising Star Award at Billboard Canada Women in Music, the organisation announced this week. The Scarborough born, Los Angeles based singer is one of four newly named honourees, alongside Cardi B, Summer Walker and Bebe Rexha.
The full honours list gives the Canadian award its context. Cardi B will accept the Global Woman of the Year Award. Summer Walker receives the Global Visionary Award, following her Finally Still Over It arena tour, which kicked off in Toronto and closed with two sold out nights at London’s O2 Arena. Bebe Rexha receives the Global Hitmaker Award, recognising a career that moved from songwriting for others to charting artist, including her 2026 album Dirty Blonde reaching No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Dance Albums chart. The ceremony is hosted by Leandra Earl and Kylie Miller of Toronto band The Beaches, who were recognised as Women of the Year in the previous edition. Inside that company, the Rising Star slot is the one reserved for the Canadian artist the industry expects to break next, and this year it belongs to a singer from Scarborough.
Chxrry Rising Star Award: The Road Here
Chxrry, formerly billed as Chxrry22, made history four years ago as the first female artist signed to The Weeknd’s XO record label. That signing alone would make her a footnote in Canadian music. The years since have been spent turning it into a career. She has played both intimate rooms and stadium stages during her opening stint on The Weeknd’s After Hours Til Dawn tour, one of the highest grossing tours in music history, and this year she played 16 sold out shows worldwide, including two stops in Toronto.
That live record is the part of the Rising Star case that is easiest to verify and hardest to fake. Stadium opening slots expose an artist to audiences who did not buy a ticket to see them, in markets far from home, night after night. Sixteen sold out shows in a single year, across the globe, is not a social media metric. It is a touring business, and it is the foundation this award is recognising. Toronto audiences were part of it twice, which matters for an artist whose story starts in Scarborough and now runs through Los Angeles.
From Scarborough to the XO Roster
The background is worth restating for readers meeting her through this award. Chxrry grew up in Scarborough, in Toronto’s east end, and first built attention by posting singing videos online, several of which went viral in 2017. A move to Atlanta followed, then the XO signing in 2022. Her debut single The Falls arrived in April 2022, followed by Call Me, and both appeared on her debut EP The Other Side. A second EP, Siren, followed in October 2023, and collaborations along the way included Never Had This featuring Vory.
That arc, from Toronto suburb to the first woman signed to the label founded by Scarborough’s most famous musical export, is the kind of lineage Canadian hip hop and R and B coverage exists to track. The Weeknd built XO out of Toronto. Its first female signing coming from his own side of the city, then opening his stadium tour, then collecting a national Rising Star honour, is a full circle that the scene can point to with pride. Canadian hip hop artists and the R and B voices beside them have spent a decade proving Toronto develops world level talent. Chxrry is the current proof.
What the Award Signals Next
Billboard Canada’s Women in Music honours are an industry signal as much as a celebration. The Global awards name the stars already at the top of the business. The Rising Star award is a bet, placed publicly, on who joins them. For Chxrry, the bet lands at a useful moment: the touring proof is established, the XO platform is active, and the Toronto stops on her 2026 run showed the home audience is already in place.
The next step the award usually precedes is a headline chapter of her own, new music scaled to the rooms she has been opening. Nothing about that has been announced alongside the honour, and this post will not invent a date for it. What can be said on the record is simpler. A Scarborough singer who started by posting covers online is now a Billboard Canada honouree in the same announcement as Cardi B and Summer Walker, with 16 sold out shows this year behind her. For Canadian music, and for every young singer in Toronto’s east end posting videos tonight, that is the story, and it is a good one.
