Johnny McDaid takes BMI’s President’s Award

Johnny McDaid will receive the BMI President’s Award at the 2026 BMI London Awards on 28 September at The Dorchester, London. BMI announced the honour in mid?August. The private ceremony is hosted by BMI chief executive Mike O’Neill, executive vice?president Mike Steinberg and vice?president Barbara Cane. The same evening will recognise the British and European songwriters and publishers behind the previous year’s most?performed songs.

McDaid, originally from Derry in Northern Ireland, has built a dual career as a member of Snow Patrol and as a writer for other artists. His co?writes include Shape of You and Bad Habits for Ed Sheeran, and he has written tracks for Robbie Williams, Alicia Keys, Lewis Capaldi and others. He is a two?time Grammy nominee and a two?time Ivor Novello winner, and already holds 17 BMI Awards. Previous recipients of the President’s Award include Noel Gallagher and Fraser T. Smith.

Snow Patrol’s long arc

Snow Patrol are a rock band formed in 1994 in Dundee, Scotland. The present line?up comprises Gary Lightbody, Nathan Connolly and Johnny McDaid; Lightbody is the sole remaining original member. Early albums Songs for Polarbears (1998) and When It’s All Over We Still Have to Clear Up (2001) laid the groundwork. Final Straw (2003) brought the band to a wider audience. In the years that followed, reworked projects and The Fireside Sessions in 2020 kept the catalogue in motion. The Forest Is The Path arrived in 2024, with an extended edition the same year, and the single But I’ll Keep Trying followed in 2025. More than three decades on from their Dundee start, the band remain a working concern while McDaid’s outside writing has run in parallel.

That double path is what the BMI honour marks. The award is not pinned to one chart week or one album cycle; it recognises the full run of work — the Snow Patrol records and the songs that left the band’s orbit for other voices.

Songs beyond the band

Ed Sheeran’s catalogue, from the independent No. 5 Collaborations Project in 2011 through the Asylum years and on to Play in 2025, has been one of the most visible stages for McDaid’s craft. Shape of You and Bad Habits stand among the most?named of those collaborations. Lewis Capaldi’s rise, from the Bloom and Breach EPs through the later Survive material, has likewise drawn on outside writers; McDaid is among those who have contributed tracks. Robbie Williams and Alicia Keys complete a list that shows how far a Derry songwriter’s name now travels.

The London Awards gather the British and European side of BMI’s membership each year. A President’s Award is reserved for a career already dense with performance and with songs that keep returning on radio and on stage. McDaid arrives at The Dorchester with Ivor Novellos, Grammy nominations and 17 earlier BMI Awards behind him, and with Snow Patrol still releasing new work.

The ceremony itself is private; the award is not. It places McDaid in a short line of songwriters BMI has singled out in London and leaves the next chapter of both the band’s catalogue and his co?writes open.