Latin Grammys CEO Manuel Abud Talks Moving the Show Back to Miami, Breakthrough Submissions and Future International Shows

When the Latin Grammys return to the U.S. for its 25th anniversary on Nov. 14, the show will unfurl against a familiar backdrop: Miami.

“We’re bringing the city inside the show,” Latin Recording Academy CEO Manuel Abud tells Variety. “Just like the 2023 show in Spain gave viewers at home a taste of Seville, the 2024 show will offer a taste of the rich Latin music culture that is thriving in Miami.”

This year’s show will serve as a homecoming for the Latin Academy, partly because its headquarters is in the city, but mostly because it follows the polarizing decision to hold the 2023 ceremony in Spain. In the past, the show — which will again be broadcast on Univision — has been staged in New York, Los Angeles, Miami and (mostly) Las Vegas, but 2023 was the first year since its 2000 inception that it was held on a different continent. The Academy found itself the target of criticism for several reasons: Some noted Seville’s role in the colonization of Latin America, not to mention the inconvenience of a transatlantic flight that could top 16 hours from the West Coast.

However, the experiment paid off in at least one way: The 2023 pre-show and three-hour telecast had a viewership of 18.9 million people across Spain, the U.S. and Mexico, up 44% over the previous year.
“We achieved our main goal, which was making the Latin Grammys a citywide celebration,” Abud says. “When you arrived in the city, it was immediately clear that the show was happening there. Our branding was on the trains, on the airplanes, on the Ubers.”

The move was based on a deal worth a reported €19 million ($20.3 million) between the Academy and the government of Spain’s Andalucia province. That deal continues until 2025, with additional Latin Grammy-related activations and events planned for the region, but “I just don’t think we’re going back to Spain before we go to a Latin American country,” Abud says, acknowledging another criticism of last year’s location. Plus, “we obviously learned these things are always more expensive than you initially project. Of course, we had support from our partners in Andalusia, but the cost was a shock. There’s no denying, it’s much easier for Univision to produce the show in the States than in Spain.”

“We’re still evaluating all of the possibilities,” he concludes. “But the show can go international at any time. We’re not tied down to anything.”

With the ceremony five months away, it’s too early to give any projections on what it might look like beyond the Miami theme, but the 2024 awards will feature two new categories: contemporary Mexican music album and Latin electronic music performance.

“The addition of those categories has been in the works for over two years,” says Luis Dousdebes, the Academy’s chief awards, membership and preservation officer. “What people often forget is that for a category to be accepted, there needs to be enough music coming out to [justify] the addition of a category; there was more than enough product for these two sectors. We also needed to recruit a team of voting members that could accurately assess these submissions.”

Dousdebes feels more than confident that the competition in these new categories will be substantial. He says they have received an overwhelming number of submissions, a stark contrast to the low participation for the musica urbana album category at the 2024 (main) Grammy Awards, which had only three nominees.

“The number of submissions we received this year was significantly greater than the previous year,” Abud says. “We knew after a year in Spain, the follow-up show had to be next level, and so far, it’s shaping up to be exactly that. It was clear we had to return to the U.S. at this moment where the Latin music industry is booming. With all love and respect for Las Vegas, Miami was the obvious choice from the start.”