If you have been anywhere near African music this year, you already know: Black Sherif is having a notable run. On September 3rd, the Konongo-born star opened the door to his inner world with Sun Sherif, a six-track EP released via EMPIRE. Where IRON BOY carried the weight of survivor’s guilt and self-doubt, Sun Sherif finds him lighter, more assured, tracing the quiet rhythms of his days from private thoughts at dawn to late-night reflections once kept from the outside world. He is calling it “more than an EP,” an open door into the private space that shapes him.
The project features two standout collaborators. AratheJay, the rapidly rising Ghanaian Afrobeats and highlife artist known for his spiritual, introspective sound, joins him on “Forever,” a track where Blacko embraces the ease his labour has earned him. And Full Blown, the Trinidad and Tobago musical duo formed by brothers Kory and Kevon Hart, round out a tracklist that opens with “Expresso,” a nod to the relentless grind of his earlier years now tempered by hard-won peace. Black Sherif previewed the project at an exclusive listening session in London back in August, giving the world its first taste of a Blacko who, by his own account, sounds happy.
That shift in tone tracks with everything else that has happened to him this year, because 2026 has been the busiest, biggest stretch of Black Sherif’s career so far.
Let’s begin with the World Cup. As Ghana prepared for its 2026 FIFA World Cup campaign, Black Sherif became the unofficial soundtrack of the Black Stars’ run. In March, he headlined Puma’s Ghana kit launch alongside football legend Asamoah Gyan and Black Queens forward Freda Ayisi, performing live at a street-level event in Brooklyn that turned what should have been a simple kit reveal into a carnival, complete with a 4v4 tournament and crowds dancing to the viral “Kakalika.” Weeks before Ghana’s opener against Panama, he popped up at the Black Stars’ training camp in the United States, performing “Top of the Morning” for the players and sending a video of them singing and dancing along viral across Ghanaian social media. Then came “Find A Way,” his anthem for Ghana’s World Cup campaign, released in partnership with Puma, all bombastic afro-centric production and raw, unfiltered vocals built around one idea: no matter how far life takes you, you never lose your roots. When Argentina staged a dramatic comeback against Egypt at the tournament, it was Black Sherif’s own reaction, caught on camera mid-celebration, that went viral all over again. Rather than just releasing a football song, he became woven into the tournament’s fabric.
Then there’s the awards run, and the volume alone of which is hard to overstate. At the 2026 Telecel Ghana Music Awards, Black Sherif led the field with nine nominations off the back of IRON BOY alone, four of them for the single “Sacrifice.” He walked away with Album of the Year and, in a head-to-head with Medikal, the night’s biggest prize: Artiste of the Year. It’s his second time taking that title, having first won it back in 2023, making him start to look less like a breakout artist and more like a decade-defining one. From there, the nominations just kept stacking up: multiple nods at the Ghana Music Awards UK’s tenth-anniversary edition, and four nominations at the 2026 AFRIMMA Awards, including Best Male West Africa, Best Male Rap Act, and Album of the Year for IRON BOY, part of a bigger haul that had him leading Ghana’s 21 total nominations at the continental ceremony.
And he has been everywhere to prove it live. The Sun Swagger Tour has taken him through the United States and the UK this year, including a run at New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom and shows across cities where fans describe the same thing over and over: an artist who does not just perform his catalogue; he detonates it, moving thousands of people like one. That momentum builds directly on the IRONBOY tour, which crossed the US and Europe and culminated in two sold-out nights at Shepherd’s Bush Empire, and a European fanbase that just keeps growing.
Add it all together: a genre-bending Ghanaian rapper and singer who has gone from “Kwaku the Traveller” and a million TikTok creations to headlining a World Cup kit launch, soundtracking a national team’s campaign, sweeping Ghana’s biggest award show for a second time, and selling out rooms on two continents. Calling his new album, Sun Sherif, a “comeback” would be much too soft. It’s a victory lap from an artist who has spent 2026 proving there is nowhere his sound cannot travel.
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