About The Heritage Prize

General

The Heritage Prize is a hall of fame-minded critics prize/public polling campaign meant to celebrate classic Canadian albums created before Polaris began in 2006. Like the Polaris Music Prize, winners and nominees of the Heritage Prize are albums of the highest artistic distinction, without regard to sales or affiliations.

Think of the Heritage Prize as our version of a hall of fame where we try to determine who would have been nominated or won the Prize in the years before it started in 2006.

How it works is an 11 person group of Canadian music media and historians gather together each year to create a vote-curated list of 12 Short List-nominated albums from which one album is chosen as a winner via a public vote. Separately, a second album is also chosen by the Heritage Prize jury.

2024 Key Dates

September 17, 2024 — Voting opens.
October 11, 2024 — Voting closes.
October 17, 2024 — Winning albums revealed.

Jury

The 2024 Heritage Prize jury is:
Lisa Christiansen
Dani Elwell
Brian Fauteux
Vish Khanna
Marc-Xavier Leblanc
Elliott Lefko
Julia Lipscombe
Antoine-Samuel Mauffette Alavo
Mike McCann

Julian Taylor is this year’s guest musician juror.

Heritage Prize Posters

Heritage Prize designated albums are commemorated with limited edition silk-screen posters commissioned by visual artists who’ve been inspired by these records.

A small number of these Heritage Prize posters are made available for public sale each year. View these posters.