Taylor Swift Shouted Out Fiancé Travis Kelce During Her 2026 iHeartRadio Music Awards Speech
3 min readTHE RUNDOWN
- Taylor Swift took home the Pop Album of the Year award at tonight’s iHeartRadio Music Awards.
- The singer had nine nominations going into the ceremony.
- In her speech, she thanked her fiancé Travis Kelce for making her feel “happy and confident and free.”
Taylor Swift added to her iHeartRadio Music Award trophy collection this evening, winning the Pop Album of the Year award. The Life of a Showgirl singer, who arrived with nine nominations tonight, thanked her fans for inspiring the “energy” of the album—“happy and strong and confident and free”—and for turning “The Fate of Ophelia” into “the biggest hit of my career.”
Swift also specifically shouted out her fiancé Travis Kelce, saying, “I think that this album probably also feels very happy and confident and free because that’s the way that I get to feel every single day of my life because of my fiancé, who’s here tonight.” From the crowd, Kelce clapped and mouthed “I love you” to Swift on the stage.
Read Swift’s full acceptance speech below:
It’s so nice to be here. Raye giving this to me is so cool because I’m a massive fan of hers…And also just being here with fans, with people who clearly love music so much.
The album, The Life of a Showgirl, was really inspired by the energy that I felt, like, looking into crowds and seeing you guys and connecting with you every single night. And so the album came out with this energy of just feeling really happy and strong and confident and free. And so I want to say thank you to the fans for giving me that feeling.
And I think that this album probably also feels very happy and confident and free because that’s the way that I get to feel every single day of my life because of my fiancé, who’s here tonight.
So thank you, thanks for all the vibes.
I really just wanted to say thank you, also, to iHeart and thank you to anyone who cared about “The Fate of Ophelia” because you made that into the biggest hit of my career, which is crazy at this point. I just love my fans so much for giving me the ability to do this. I love what I do. I love that you’ve allowed me to do it for this long, and I just appreciate every day I get to do it. Thank you so much.
Swift gave one of her last big acceptance speeches at the 2024 iHeartRadio Awards ceremony, where she won Artist of the Year. She thanked her fans and also teased her then-upcoming album, The Tortured Poets Department, saying, “Hey, I wanted to say thank you so much to anyone who voted for this award. iHeart, you’ve also just been so incredibly supportive over the course of my entire career but especially this year has been pretty spectacular. I am so grateful for that.”
She added, “You know, to the fans, it’s completely up to you to choose how you spend your time, what concerts you want to go to, what music you want to make the soundtrack to your life, and to anyone who has included me in those choices. I’m so, so, so thankful for that. And you know, we have so many exciting things ahead of us. I’m continuing along with the [Eras] tour, and most importantly, I have a brand new album called The Tortured Poets Department, which comes out on April 19, and I’m so proud of it. I cannot wait to share it with you so thank you for voting for me for this incredible honor: Artist of the Year. I am so blown away and so thankful, and I just can’t wait to keep having fun with you guys because we have a lot of exciting things coming up.”