We’re a little over halfway through 2026, and thanks to a report from Luminate (their 2026 Midyear Report, to be exact), we now know that two genres are surging in popularity more than any others: Latin and country music. It’s been pretty evident that country has been on the rise in the past couple of years. You’ve probably heard the phrase “country’s cool again” thrown around a couple of times. All of the arenas and stadiums packed with fans seeing country acts supports that sentiment, and now, the numbers are even aligning with country music’s increasing popularity. Luminate says that though two genres still reign supreme in the United States, there’s two other categories that are really blowing up: “In terms of genre: The combination of R&B/hip-hop remains on top in the U.S., but its dominance is being challenged by genre diversification, as other styles experience growth. Latin and country music are surging thanks to artists like Bad Bunny and Ella Langley. Certain AI-generated tracks are also growing in popularity.” All good news… well, except for that AI-generated part. We’ll get to more on that later… Luminate finds that there’s a post-2020 trend of country music listenership going up and up. Luminate’s vice president of music insights and industry relations, Jaime Marconette, told the AP that genres like country and Latin were already growing prior to the pandemic, and that period of time helped aid an acceleration: “R&B/Hip-Hop remains a massive commercial force, but its historic dominance is leveling off as the streaming landscape diversifies. The genre was an early adopter of streaming, commanding nearly 30% of U.S. audio consumption by 2022, but the post-pandemic era has seen accelerated … growth from genres like Country and Latin.” I’d imagine it wouldn’t be a stretch to say the Bad Bunny Super Bowl halftime show seems to be paying off, in terms of rising listenership. The country and Latin genres might be growing, but they are still a ways away from other “Genre Goliaths” like hip-hop, rock, and pop (not that far beyond pop, actually). That being said, country can claim that they have the two biggest albums of the 2026 thus far: “In the first half of 2026, the R&B/hip-hop genres accounted for nearly 180.3 billion streams in the U.S., followed by rock with 137.2 billion, pop with 87.8 billion, country with 63.8 billion and Latin with 63 billion… Albums may be a good place to see the growth of both Latin and country in the U.S. The top albums of the year, so far, are Morgan Wallen’s ‘I’m the Problem’ with 2.035 million album equivalent units, Ella Langley’s ‘Dandelion’ with 1.638 million and Bad Bunny’s ‘Debí Tirar Más Fotos’ with 1.543 million.” Look at Morgan Wallen and Ella Langley dominating the most listened to albums portion of the report. And I know I mentioned we’d get to the AI-generated stuff… I’d rather not point it out, but there was another country song that got a lot of plays. It happened to be from the same “artist” who put out “Walk My Walk” last year, which shot up to the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s country digital song sales chart. Breaking Rust is still at it, and one of the AI-artist’s song racked up almost 20 million streams: “The most-streamed AI-generated song in the U.S. is country act Breaking Rust’s “Livin’ on Borrowed Time,” which accounted for 19 million streams. In all countries except the U.S., it earned 13.4 million streams.” I don’t know how you feel about it, but in my opinion, 19 million streams of an AI-generated song is 19 million streams too many.The post Report Shows That Country Music (and Latin) Are Surging In Popularity In 2026 first appeared on Whiskey Riff.