Amyl and The Sniffers, INXS Win Big at 2026 APRA Music Awards

Doubling up on the night was Guy Sebastian and co-writers Ned Houston and Robby De Sa, who won most performed Australian work and most performed pop work for “Maybe”. The victory marks Houston’s first APRA Award, and the fourth career win for Sebastian and De Sa.

Sia scooped the category for most performed Australian work overseas for the third consecutive year with the aptly-titled “Unstoppable,” for the singer and songwriter’s 14^th donut-shaped award across her career. The Adelaide-raised artist is now APRA’s most-awarded writer member of all time.

Hitmaker Sarah Aarons made the trip from her base in Los Angeles to receive the international recognition award, her sixth APRA Award. While visiting the stage, Aarons, who was worked with the likes of Tame Impala, BTS, Flume, Gracie Abrams, ROSÉ and Maren Morris, told of her homesickness. Her favorite restaurant on the West Coast is the Qantas business lounge at LAX, she quipped. “Not being home is really hard.”

Emily Wurramara made history at the 2024 ARIA Awards, when Nara won for best adult contemporary album, the first time an Indigenous woman had won the category since its inception in 1987. The proud Warnindhilyagwa woman etched her name in APRAs history at the Hordern when she nabbed emerging songwriter of the year, a board-appointed award recognizing her incredible body of work over the past year.

The biggest cheers of the night, however, were directed at INXS, who were saluted with the Ted Albert Award for Outstanding Services to Australian Music. Long-time friend, artist and APRA chair Jenny Morris inducted the new wave band, with an emotional trip down memory lane.

“People ask me what made INX different. The honest answer is everything,” she remarked. “I’ve stood on the riser with these guys. I watched them from the wings, from the front of the house, from the stage door, from every single angle. They were extraordinary.” The six-piece’s “power, intelligence, and visceral effect of the music couldn’t be ignored.”

Holding back tears, Morris recounted the late, great frontman Michael Hutchence, who passed away in 1997, aged 37. “The Michael I knew was modest. As his friends will tell you, in his private time he liked nothing better than just being part of the cohort. One of the bunch. He was not someone who looked over your shoulder at the room full of glitz and glamor. He would look you in the eye. He genuinely wanted to hear what you had to say. He once said, ‘there is an integrity to INXS in the music, that makes it worthwhile.’” He claimed they were “worthwhile. A modest word from a modest man.”