Could he pull it off? Over the past couple weeks, we’ve seen Colby Acuff make an incredible Cinderella run in our Whiskey Riff Madness tournament, with the #16-seed knocking off #1-seed Chris Stapleton, #9-seed Dierks Bentley, #4-seed Red Clay Strays, #6-seed Whiskey Myers, and finally taking down fellow Cinderella story #15-seed Shane Smith & the Saints to reach the championship matchup. But in the final round, Colby found himself facing one of the greatest bands in country music as he went up against the Turnpike Troubadours for the championship. So before we get to the winner, let’s take a look back at how we got here. For this year’s edition of our annual March Madness tournament, we took 64 artists from every corner of country music, from mainstream to Texas country to red dirt to Appalachia and everything in between, and we’re letting you vote for your favorite. We based the seeding on monthly Spotify listeners, which resulted in some fan favorites being seeded towards the bottom of the bracket. The mainstream country artists had a hard time this year, with voters clearly preferring Texas or Appalachia over Nashville: #1-seed Morgan Wallen fell to up-and-coming Texas native Hudson Westbrook in the Round of 32, and fellow #1-seed Luke Combs also made an early exit to #13-seed Sturgill Simpson in the Sweet Sixteen. The final #1-seed fell when Zach Bryan lost to #8-seed Zach Top in the Elite Eight, but then Zach went down in the next round to Texas-based Shane Smith & the Saints, leaving four independent artists battling it out. And for the championship, we were left with Turnpike Troubadours vs. Colby Acuff, two artists who I would venture to say share a lot of overlap in their fanbases. It was truly anybody’s game. Along the way, we’ve continued to set new records for the number of votes in our Whiskey Riff Madness tournament: We had over 68,000 votes in the Final Four, which absolutely blew the previous record of 20,000 votes out of the water – a record that had been set just two rounds earlier in this year’s Sweet Sixteen. Well spoiler alert, we set a new record in the championship round. We’ve been doing our annual Whiskey Riff Madness tournament for nearly a decade now, and it’s safe to say we’ve NEVER seen numbers like we saw in this round, which had over 110,000 votes cast in the past three days. And I know, you’re all ready to get to the champion. So without further ado, the winner of the 2026 Whiskey Riff Madness tournament is… Colby Acuff. I mean, was there ever any doubt? Colby jumped in early to rally his fanbase, waging a masterful meme campaign and never backing down, no matter who he was up against. View this post on Instagram And credit to his fanbase, they stepped up for him. I think it’s safe to say that Colby Acuff may have the most dedicated fans in country music at this point, because any time he put out the call we saw a massive surge of votes. At one point (maybe the only time he was down after the first round) Colby was behind by about 1,000 votes in the Final Four, but within an hour of Colby rallying his troops he had surged to take a 5,000 vote lead. Those are the kind of fans you want in your corner. So congratulations to Colby Acuff, who did indeed “DUNK THAT SHIT” and pulled off maybe the greatest upset of all time. It was David vs. Goliath, but with the heart of a lion and the help of CapCut and social media, Goliath never stood a chance. Never raise the white flag. The post WHISKEY RIFF MADNESS 2026: And The Winner Is… first appeared on Whiskey Riff.