---
title: RAYE Won the 2026 Mercury Prize With an Album She Released on Her Own Label
description: RAYE won the 2026 Mercury Prize for This Music May Contain Hope, a number one album released on her own independent label, Human Re Sources.
author: Dr Marina Nani (Editor-in-Chief)
date: 2026-11-13T15:00:30.053Z
updated: 2026-11-13T15:00:30.060Z
canonical: https://thequantumoflight.com/article/raye-mercury-prize-2026
image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/pexels-14719432.webp
categories: Music 
content_type: Profile
publication: The Quantum of Light
schema_type: Article
about:
  - type: Person
    name: RAYE
    description: British singer-songwriter Rachel Keen, born in London in 1997. Her second album, This Music May Contain Hope, released on her own label Human Re Sources, went to number one in the UK and won the 2026 Mercury Prize.
    jobTitle: Singer-songwriter
---

On Thursday 22nd October 2026, at the Utilita Arena in Newcastle, RAYE won the Mercury Prize for This Music May Contain Hope, her second album. She beat a shortlist of twelve albums that included records by Paul McCartney, Olivia Dean and Jade, and she took home the £25,000 prize. The judges praised the 'real imagination and scope' she showed in what an album can be. The following evening she played an orchestral concert at the Royal Albert Hall.

## The Label That Would Not Release Her Album

RAYE was born Rachel Keen in London and trained at the BRIT School. She signed a major-label deal as a teenager and wrote hits for herself and for other artists, but for seven years the label did not release a debut album. In 2021 she said so in public and walked away. Her first album, My 21st Century Blues, came out independently in 2023, reached number two in the UK and won her a record six BRIT Awards the following year.

## Inside This Music May Contain Hope

She released her second album on 27th March 2026 through her own label, Human Re Sources, with distribution from The Orchard. It has 17 tracks arranged in four 'seasons', one on each side of the vinyl, and it moves through jazz, big band, blues, soul and orchestral pop. Her sisters Absolutely and Amma sing on it, and Hans Zimmer and Al Green are among the collaborators. The single Where Is My Husband! reached number one in January, and the album went straight to number one a week after release, the first chart-topping album of her career.

RAYE has called the record 'medicine for myself that I can share with the world', and the title tells you what she set out to give her listeners.

## What Owning Your Work Makes Possible

If you create anything, RAYE's story is about control. For seven years a label decided when her songs reached the public, and in that time it never released them as an album. On her own label she chose to make a 73-minute concept album in four seasons, a format that a business built on singles and playlists rarely backs, and that album became her first number one and her first Mercury Prize.

The Mercury judges said the album still has an important role to play in the age of streaming. RAYE has shown that it can also be the format an artist uses to take her career back into her own hands.

## The Album She Stopped Waiting For

RAYE waited seven years for permission to release an album. Then she stopped waiting, built her own label and made the album of the year in Britain and Ireland. If something you made is sitting in a drawer until someone else approves it, her Mercury Prize is a good reason to take it out.