Grammy Winners for Best Comedy Album
Every Grammy Best Comedy Album winner from 1959 to 2026, with the record holders, category name changes and the strangest wins.
You've probably scrolled through comedy specials on a weeknight, landed on one that made you laugh out loud, and wondered whether anyone gives out real awards for this. The Grammys have since 1959. The most recent Best Comedy Album went to Nate Bargatze in 2026 for Your Friend, Nate Bargatze. Below you'll find every winner by era, the record holders, how the category changed over the years and its strangest wins.
The latest winner
Nate Bargatze won Best Comedy Album at the 68th Annual Grammy Awards. The winning album was the recording of his Netflix special Your Friend, Nate Bargatze. He was nominated once before, in 2022, for The Greatest Average American, so this was his first win in the category. The award was handed out in Los Angeles on February 1, 2026, at the non-televised ceremony held before the main broadcast.
He beat a strong group of nominees:
- Bill Burr, Drop Dead Years
- Sarah Silverman, PostMortem
- Ali Wong, Single Lady
- Jamie Foxx, What Had Happened Was...
The 2026 award covered recordings released between August 31, 2024, and August 30, 2025. The Recording Academy says the category honors "excellence in comedy recordings, including spoken word stand-up comedy and musical/novelty recordings." An album can be recorded live or in a studio, and it can be audio or video.
Bargatze's win came 67 years after the first one, which went to a song about cartoon chipmunks.
Every winner, era by era
1959–1969: Chipmunks, parodies and the start of Cosby's run. Ross Bagdasarian Sr. won the first award for "The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)." Shelley Berman, Bob Newhart, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Vaughn Meader (The First Family) and Allan Sherman ("Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh") won next. Bill Cosby then took every award from 1965 to 1969, and his streak continued into 1970.
1970s: Stand-up's golden decade. After Cosby's Sports (1970), the winners were Flip Wilson, Lily Tomlin, George Carlin (FM & AM), Cheech & Chong (Los Cochinos), Richard Pryor three years running (1975–77) and Steve Martin twice, for Let's Get Small and A Wild and Crazy Guy.
1980s: Big names. Robin Williams won in 1980, 1988 and 1989. Rodney Dangerfield won for No Respect, Pryor added two more wins, and Eddie Murphy won for Comedian. "Weird Al" Yankovic won with "Eat It" (1985), Whoopi Goldberg won for her Broadway show, and Cosby picked up a seventh win in 1987.
1990s: Classical jokes, then spoken word. Peter Schickele won four straight times (1990–93), most of them with his P.D.Q. Bach albums. After the rule change in 1994, the winners were George Carlin, Sam Kinison, Jonathan Winters, Al Franken, Chris Rock (Roll with the New) and Mel Brooks with Carl Reiner.
2000s: Rock, Carlin and the TV hosts. Chris Rock won for Bigger & Blacker and Never Scared. Carlin won in 2001, 2002 and 2009, and Robin Williams won again in 2003. Other winners were Yankovic (Poodle Hat), Jon Stewart and The Daily Show cast, Lewis Black and Flight of the Conchords.
2010s: A mixed bag. Stephen Colbert won for a Christmas special. Lewis Black won again, and Louis C.K. won twice (Hilarious, Live at Madison Square Garden). The other winners were Jimmy Fallon, Kathy Griffin, Yankovic (Mandatory Fun), Patton Oswalt (Talking for Clapping) and Dave Chappelle, who started his run in 2018 and won again in 2019.
2020s: Chappelle's decade so far. Chappelle won in 2020, 2023, 2024 and 2025 (Sticks & Stones, The Closer, What's in a Name?, The Dreamer). The gaps went to Tiffany Haddish (Black Mitzvah, 2021), Louis C.K. (Sincerely Louis CK, 2022) and Bargatze in 2026.
The record holders
A few names keep coming back in that list, and some of their records may last a long time.
- Most wins: Bill Cosby, 7. Six came in a row, from 1965 to 1970, and the seventh came in 1987 for Those of You with or Without Children, You'll Understand. His later 2018 conviction, which was overturned, has made him a hard name to celebrate. Still, the record stands.
- Dave Chappelle, 6. He won 2018–2020 and 2023–2025. Had he won in 2026, he would have tied Cosby. Bargatze's win stopped that streak at three.
- George Carlin and Richard Pryor, 5 each. Carlin's wins stretch from 1973 to 2009. Pryor won all five between 1975 and 1983.
- Peter Schickele and Robin Williams, 4 each. Schickele's four in a row (1990–93) is the longest streak after Cosby's six. It also changed the category's rules, as the next section explains.
- Chris Rock, Louis C.K. and "Weird Al" Yankovic, 3 each.
Carlin holds the nomination record with 16. Cosby has 13, and Pryor and Yankovic have 10 each. Carlin also has the category's best-known posthumous win: It's Bad for Ya won in 2009, after he died in 2008.
How the category changed
The award has had several names over the years:
- Best Comedy Performance (1959–1967)
- Best Comedy Recording (1968–1991)
- Best Comedy Album (1992–1993)
- Best Spoken Comedy Album (1994–2003)
- Best Comedy Album again (2004–present)
Early on, the Academy couldn't decide whether funny songs and stand-up belonged together. In 1960 and 1961 it gave out two awards. The musical comedy award went to Homer and Jethro in 1960 and to Jo Stafford and Paul Weston in 1961. The spoken comedy award went to Shelley Berman and then Bob Newhart. From 1962 on there was a single award.
The biggest change came after Schickele's streak. Classical-music comedy albums had won four years in a row, so in 1994 the award was limited to spoken-word albums and moved into the spoken field. The award didn't stop during those years, though. It kept going as Best Spoken Comedy Album and went to Carlin, Kinison, Franken, Rock and others.
In 2004 the award moved back to the comedy field under its old name, and musical comedy was allowed again. A musical comedy album won that same year: Yankovic's Poodle Hat.
Surprises and oddities
Since musical comedy is allowed again, some winners aren't stand-ups at all. The Chipmunks won the very first award, and "Weird Al" has won three times across 30 years (1985, 2004, 2015). Flight of the Conchords, a New Zealand musical duo, won in 2008. With the holidays coming up, it's worth noting that two winners are Christmas records: the Chipmunks' song and Colbert's A Colbert Christmas.
Late-night hosts have won too. Jon Stewart won in 2005 with a mock civics textbook made with The Daily Show cast, Stephen Colbert won in 2010 and Jimmy Fallon won in 2013 with Blow Your Pants Off.
Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner won in 1999 for The 2000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000, a sketch they had first recorded decades earlier.
The best-known near miss is Jim Gaffigan. He has 8 nominations and has never won.
Bargatze was in a similar spot before 2026, with one nomination and no wins. In 2026 he beat Burr, Silverman, Wong and Foxx, and kept Chappelle from tying the record.