The Class of 2026: Rock Hall Swings Wide and Lands Big

Iron Maiden, Oasis, Wu-Tang Clan, and Phil Collins headline a sprawling 18-honoree class that reflects the genre’s elastic identity

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has never been particularly good at playing it safe, and the class of 2026 makes that abundantly clear. Announced Monday night on a Hall of Fame-themed episode of American Idol by Ryan Seacrest and 2022 inductee Lionel Richie, the 18-member class is one of the most genre-diverse in the institution’s 40-year history. Metal, hip-hop, post-punk, soul, new wave, and sleek radio pop all get seats at the table this year, and the arguments about who got left out are already louder than a Marshall stack.

The eight performer inductees are Phil Collins, Billy Idol, Iron Maiden, Joy Division/New Order, Oasis, Sade, Luther Vandross, and Wu-Tang Clan. The induction ceremony will tape November 14 at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles before airing in December on ABC and Disney+.

The Headliners

Iron Maiden’s induction has been a long time coming, and the metal faithful will be loud about it. The band that turned Eddie the Head into one of rock’s most iconic mascots, and packed arenas for five decades on the strength of twin guitar harmonies and operatic ambition, has been criminally overlooked by a Hall that has historically kept heavy metal at arm’s length. This one feels overdue by about fifteen years.

Oasis arrives with considerably more drama baked in. The Gallagher brothers’ reconciliation tour, which generated some of the biggest concert news of 2025, gives this induction an almost theatrical timing. Whatever Liam and Noel’s relationship status is on any given Tuesday, the catalogue speaks for itself: Definitely Maybe, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, and a run of singles that defined the Britpop era with a swagger that hasn’t aged a day.

Phil Collins enters as a solo artist, having already been inducted as a member of Genesis back in 2010. He got in on his first solo nomination, which is a statement about how deep that run of hits actually goes. From “In the Air Tonight” to “Sussudio” to “Another Day in Paradise,” Collins owned radio in ways that critics underestimated and audiences never did. His eight Grammys, including Album of the Year for No Jacket Required in 1985, tell the real story.

Joy Division/New Order is perhaps the class’s most artistically significant entry and, as Ultimate Classic Rock noted, genuinely surprising. Joy Division’s influence on post-punk, gothic rock, and alternative music is incalculable. The fact that New Order is bundled in acknowledges the full arc of what Ian Curtis and then Bernard Sumner built across two distinct but deeply connected chapters.

Wu-Tang Clan’s inclusion continues the Hall’s overdue reckoning with hip-hop’s centrality to rock and roll history broadly defined. First-time nominees, the Staten Island collective that revolutionized rap production and turned a group of nine MCs into a mythology unto themselves, represent a generation of artists who reshaped American music as thoroughly as any band that ever plugged into a Fender.

Luther Vandross, also a first-time nominee, is inducted posthumously. The soul singer passed away in 2005, and while the timing of his recognition is curious given his decades of eligibility, the quality of his work is not in question. His voice remains one of the great instruments in American popular music.

Billy Idol and Sade round out the performer category, with Idol’s leather-and-sneer punk rock charisma representing the energy of a generation and Sade’s cool, sophisticated jazz-tinged pop reminding everyone that the Hall’s definition of rock has stretched considerably, for better or worse depending on your perspective.

Beyond the Performers

The committee categories carry serious weight this year. Rick Rubin receives the Musical Excellence Award alongside songwriter Linda Creed and producers Arif Mardin and Jimmy Miller, a powerhouse grouping that shaped the sound of rock, soul, and rap at the highest levels. Rubin’s production fingerprints are on records from the Beastie Boys to Johnny Cash to Red Hot Chili Peppers, and his induction is frankly overdue.

The Early Influence honorees include Gram Parsons, Fela Kuti, Celia Cruz, Queen Latifah, and MC Lyte, a genuinely global cross-section of foundational artists.

The Ones Who Didn’t Make It

The omissions are notable. The Black Crowes, Jeff Buckley, Lauryn Hill, INXS, Melissa Etheridge, and New Edition all came up short, and the conversation around each of them will continue until the votes go differently. New Edition had actually won the public fan vote this year, which makes their exclusion particularly stinging for their fanbase.

The ceremony is set for November. The arguments start now.