Drake will receive his fifth straight SOCAN Songwriter of the Year honour in the performer category at the 2026 SOCAN Awards. The Toronto ceremony runs October 26 at REBEL and puts Canadian songwriting, from hip hop to screen scoring, at the centre of the night.
Jessie Reyez joins him at the top of the special achievement list with the International Achievement Award. Together, the two Toronto artists frame the story SOCAN is telling this year: Canadian writers are not just competing at home, they are shaping records and screens around the world, and the October 26 gala is built to recognise that full range in one room.
Drake Extends a Five Year Run
The performer award marks five consecutive years at the top for Drake, a streak SOCAN links to his unmatched influence on music worldwide. That wording matters because the honour is specifically for songwriting. It is not a streaming trophy and it is not a popularity vote. It recognises the writing behind a run that, in 2026, included a triple album release in May with Iceman, Maid of Honour and Habibti.
That May run also rewrote chart history. Reports on the announcement note that Drake passed Michael Jackson’s long held mark for the most No. 1s by a solo male artist, while Billboard Canada has linked his latest stretch to multiple Canadian chart records and to Janice STFU, described as his longest running No. 1 single of the 2020s. Put plainly, the fifth straight SOCAN honour is not arriving in a quiet year. It arrives in the same year his catalogue pushed Habibti back to No. 1 on Billboard’s Top R and B and Hip Hop Albums chart and to the top of the Billboard Canadian Albums chart.
For readers who follow iimiTV’s Drake coverage, the through line is consistency. New albums, deluxe editions and catalogue records keep landing, but SOCAN is pointing at the craft underneath all of it. Five straight years as Songwriter of the Year, Performer, is a claim about pen and structure, not just scale.
Jessie Reyez Takes International Achievement
Reyez receives the International Achievement Award for representing Canada on the global stage and influencing music and culture with her talent. SOCAN and reports on the announcement put her worldwide streams above four billion, with a resume that moves easily between her own records and writing and collaboration work for other major artists.
She is a Grammy nominee and a multiple Juno Award winner, and her collaborators tell the rest of the story. Dua Lipa, Beyoncé and Eminem have all worked with her, and her work with Calvin Harris on Ocean gave her a first Billboard No. 1 on the Dance and Mix Show Airplay chart in November 2025, according to her publisher BMG. That mix of solo success and behind the scenes writing is exactly what an international achievement honour is meant to capture.
Reyez also gives the night a clear Toronto pairing at the top. Drake represents the hip hop and pop songwriting machine that has run for more than a decade, while Reyez represents the singer and writer who can step into a pop, R and B or dance record and change its centre of gravity. Having both honoured at REBEL on the same night underlines how wide Toronto’s writing footprint has become.
Maestro Fresh Wes and a Foundational Record
The Cultural Impact Award goes to Let Your Backbone Slide, credited to Maestro Fresh Wes, Anthony Davis and Peter Davis, alongside its publishers. Released in 1989 as the lead moment from Symphony in Effect, the song became the first single from a Canadian hip hop artist to go gold in Canada, a barrier breaking result at a time when Canadian rap had almost no commercial infrastructure behind it.
Watch the official video above and the historical weight becomes easier to hear. This was a Scarborough artist insisting, in his own words from earlier interviews, that you did not have to be American to be dope. The record proved it on the charts and on MuchMusic rotation, and it opened a door that every Toronto artist honoured this year has since walked through in a different form.
SOCAN is even building the song into the trophy itself. This year’s awards feature five bronze crotales tuned to notes from Let Your Backbone Slide, making the trophy playable. Last year’s version used notes from Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now. It is a small detail with a big message: Canadian music history is not just being cited at this ceremony, it is being handed to the winners, note for note.
The Full Honouree Picture
The special achievement list reaches well beyond hip hop and pop. Jenna Andrews takes Songwriter of the Year in the non performer category after a year that included co writing Free and What It Sounds Like for KPop Demon Hunters. Vancouver singer and songwriter Jade LeMac receives the Breakout Songwriter Award, while Nathan Micay receives the Breakout Composer Award for his work scoring HBO’s Industry, a job he was hired for in 2020 after first breaking into screen work through Canadian independent film in 2016.
Peter Peter receives the Global Impact Award for his work on Heated Rivalry. The Quebec singer and songwriter moved into original scoring with the Crave series and earned two Canadian Screen Awards earlier this year, for Best Original Music, Drama and Best Original Music, Original Song for It’s You. Andrew Lockington is Screen Composer of the Year, with SOCAN citing Atlas, Landman, Mayor of Kingstown and Special Ops: Lioness, adding to a screen career that already includes San Andreas and Rampage and, by SOCAN’s 2024 count, a dozen SOCAN Film Awards.
Every year, the SOCAN Awards shine a light on the songwriters, composers and music publishers who define and elevate Canadian music.
Jennifer Brown, SOCAN CEO
That breadth is the point worth keeping. A reader who comes to this story for Drake and Reyez leaves with a map of where Canadian writing is winning right now: a Vancouver breakout, a Quebec composer scoring a hit drama, a Toronto born composer on an HBO series, and a non performer songwriter helping power one of the year’s biggest soundtrack moments. It is a national picture, told through individual credits.
What to Know for October 26
The 2026 SOCAN Awards take place Monday, October 26 at REBEL in Toronto. Actor Andrew Phung and television personality Arisa Cox will host. SOCAN says more than 100 music creators and publishers will be honoured during the evening, with the complete winners list released that night.
Performances and appearances are also lined up from Shawn Desman, Jamie Fine and Hailey Benedict, along with the 2025 Breakout Composers, the Chan brothers. For anyone planning to follow along, the practical move is simple: watch for the full winners list on the night, because the special achievement names announced on October 7 are only the top layer. The full list is where the next wave of Canadian writers usually shows up first.
For iimiTV, this is the kind of night the site exists to cover. A foundational Toronto rap record from 1989, a five year songwriting streak from the city’s biggest artist, and a global honour for one of its sharpest singer writers, all recognised in Toronto, in the same room, on the same night. That is Canadian entertainment and hip hop history being written in present tense.
