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The ITV censors had their work cut out in a protest-filled, relatively edgy ceremony that hosted ultra-expressive performances from Rosalía, Wolf Alice and more

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Styles opened the show with his return single, Aperture, a UK No 1 in release week which is fairly swiftly dropping down the charts, perhaps because it is a real stylistic outlier in pop right now. Euphoric yet faintly distant, it conjures the feeling when you’re on a dancefloor, slightly out of it, and gazing at the human melee around you. And so it proves here, with a performance where Styles is in the moment, jiving with his considerable band and backing singers, and twitching in time with dancers in snail T-shirts and sunglasses – and yet also one level above the moment, not letting himself become too giddy beyond a couple of grins. His vocal lines are reminiscent of that master of airy yet warm observation, Kings of Convenience and Whitest Boy Alive singer Erlend Oye, and I even detected a touch of David Bowie here too: an echo of his tailoring and particular handsomeness as Styles ages, and also the way Bowie would perform, with a thousand-yard stare that also takes in the foreground.

The 26-year-old dominates in Manchester, landing the night’s biggest prizes as Rosé, Wolf Alice and Mark Ronson also take top honours

• Brit awards 2026: the full list of winners
• Alexis Petridis: This year’s Brit awards found a flicker of chaos – but the winners were never in doubt
• ‘We’re going into a dark place’: Brit awards artists voice alarm over Reform UK’s rise

Olivia Dean was the big winner at the 2026 Brit awards, taking home awards for artist of the year, pop act, song of the year for her Sam Fender duet Rein Me In, and album of the year for The Art of Loving.

In less than a year, Dean has leaped to the forefront of British pop thanks to The Art of Loving, her second album. With songs that get to the heart of the joys and frustrations of casual modern dating, she is enormously relatable, while her sophisticated and cosmopolitan songcraft, deftly finessing styles such as bossa nova, trip-hop, neo-soul and jazz together, has given her an unusually broad and cross-generational appeal.