Isaac Delgado wins Cubadisco 2026 Grand Prize for Mira cómo vengo

Isaac Delgado took Cubadisco 2026’s Grand Prize for Mira cómo vengo on May 16 at the Sala Covarrubias in Havana’s National Theater, the night’s biggest award in a competition that drew 220 works, 124 nominations and 35 prizes across the island’s main recorded-music showcase. The win landed in a year when Cubadisco was dedicated to the son cubano and staged despite Cuba’s economic and energy difficulties, which gave the result more weight than a routine industry trophy.

That matters because Cubadisco did not hand the spotlight to one lane of the catalog. The 2026 edition also spread Honorary Awards and Special Awards across a wide map of Cuban and Latin music, recognizing Mayito Rivera, Pedrito Calvo, Pedro Lugo “El Nene,” Orquesta Revé, Septeto Santiaguero, Gilberto Santa Rosa, José Alberto “El Canario,” José Luis Arango, María Elena Vinueza and Víctor Torres. In other words, Delgado’s victory sat inside a ceremony that still treats veteran singers, classic dance bands and cross-Caribbean names as part of the same conversation about Cuban music’s present tense.

The category list reinforced that reach. Alongside the standard album prizes, Cubadisco handed out distinctions for discographic notes, musicological notes, sound design, graphic design and opera prima, a reminder that the event is not just about who sold the loudest record. Daiana García also received the Award for Artistic Excellence for the Havana Chamber Orchestra’s 20th anniversary, while some of the most decorated titles included De regreso a la aldea, which was honored in the academic category and also in concert feature-film and musicological-note categories. Other distinctions went to Orquesta Failde, Miriam Ramos, Maikel Dinza, Orlando Maraca Valle, Camerata Cortés, Ariadna Cuéllar, the Havana Chamber Orchestra and Ernesto Oliva.

The festival itself ran from May 16 to May 24, with a commercial fair at Pabellón Cuba and a symposium on the son scheduled for May 19 to 21 in the Pabellón Cuba’s Salón de Mayo. It was also framed as a tribute to Jorge Gómez Barranco, who helped shape Cubadisco from its early years and led it from 2015 until his death in 2026. The National Museum of Music opened the run with My Photo with Fidel, a photographic exhibition of 22 portraits that placed Delgado’s award inside a broader state-cultural stage built around memory, archives and prestige.

For Delgado, the Grand Prize does more than add another line to the résumé. In a Cubadisco dedicated to the son cubano and celebrating the UNESCO inscription of December 10, 2025, Mira cómo vengo became the album that best matched the night’s message: veteran Cuban dance music is still earning center stage, not just a place in the margins.