Johnny McDaid takes BMI’s President’s Award

Johnny McDaid is set to receive the BMI President’s Award at the 2026 BMI London Awards. The private ceremony will take place on 28 September at The Dorchester in London. BMI announced the honour on 18 August 2026. Originally from Derry, McDaid is a songwriter, producer and a member of Snow Patrol. He has co-written global hits including Ed Sheeran’s ‘Shape of You’ and ‘Bad Habits’, has earned 17 BMI Awards and has multiple Grammy and Ivor Novello nominations. The award recognises his contributions to songwriting and production across British and Irish music. Snow Patrol and the long run of records Snow Patrol formed in 1994 in Dundee. The band’s present line-up is Gary Lightbody, Nathan Connolly and Johnny McDaid; Lightbody remains the sole original member. Their discography runs from the late-nineties albums *Songs for Polarbears* and *When It's All Over We Still Have to Clear Up* through *Final Straw* in 2003, the record that carried them to a wider audience. Later releases include the Reworked projects of 2019, *The Fireside Sessions* EP in 2020 and *The Forest Is The Path* in 2024, issued in standard and extended editions. The single ‘But I'll Keep Trying’ followed in 2025. McDaid’s role in that catalogue sits beside his outside writing, which has defined the other half of his working life. That writing has placed him on some of the most played records of the past decade. Beyond the Sheeran collaborations, he has most recently co-written tracks for the Backstreet Boys and KATSEYE. Ed Sheeran’s own arc — independent EPs such as *You Need Me* and *Loose Change*, the 2011 album *+*, *Autumn Variations* in 2023 and *Play* in 2025 — has often drawn on trusted co-writers; McDaid’s credits on ‘Shape of You’ and ‘Bad Habits’ sit among the most durable of those partnerships. An award with a clear line of precedent The London awards night will be hosted by BMI CEO Mike O’Neill, EVP Chief Revenue and Creative Officer Mike Steinberg, and VP Worldwide Creative Barbara Cane. Previous recipients of the President’s Award include Noel Gallagher and Ellie Goulding. Gallagher’s songwriting with Oasis, and later with the High Flying Birds, has long stood as a benchmark in British rock; the company McDaid now keeps underlines the award’s emphasis on craft rather than a single chart season. No further details have been given about other categories at the 2026 BMI London Awards or whether any part of the Dorchester evening will be made public. For listeners who have lived with the *Final Straw* era as well as the later pop singles, the honour simply puts a name to a career already familiar on the radio. It changes nothing about the records themselves; it does mark how far that writing has travelled from Dundee and Derry to rooms that still shape the charts. What comes next for McDaid — further band work, external sessions — has not been announced. The Dorchester date on 28 September stands as the next fixed point.