Grammy Awards 2022 announces new date, venue

MANILA, Philippines — The Recording Academy announced yesterday that the 64th annual Grammy Awards officially have a new date and location.

The initial January 31 ceremony was canceled due to COVID-19's Omicron variant. The Grammys 2022 ceremony will now take place on April 3 live from the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on CBS. The show will also be available to stream live and on demand on Paramount+.

This will be the first time the telecast has been held anywhere but in Los Angeles, California or New York since 1973, when it was held in Nashville. And it will be the first time the show has ever been held in a city in which the Recording Academy doesn’t have a chapter.

This year’s delay of the Grammy telecast is about three weeks longer than last year’s delay, also due to post-holidays COVID-19 spread in Los Angeles. The 2021 Grammy Awards were pushed back from January 31 to March 14. 

The 64th annual Grammys -- featuring nominees including Justin Bieber, Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo, will be hosted by Trevor Noah.

"We are excited to take the Grammys to Las Vegas for the very first time, and to put on a world-class show," Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr said in a statement.

The Grammys are one of several entertainment industry events that have been delayed in the hope that sky-high Covid caseloads will drop in the coming months.

Film and television events such as the Critics Choice Awards and Producers Guild Awards have also been postponed, while this week's Sundance film festival is taking place online. 

The Oscars currently are still on for March 27, one week before the rescheduled Grammys.

Jon Batiste, the jazz and R&B artist and bandleader, garnered the most nominations for this year's Grammys with 11.

As a knock-on effect of the move, country music's CMT Music Awards will switch from April 3 to later in the same month.

Omicron has become the main coronavirus variant in the United States

A record surge in the number of cases fueled by the variant has yet to recede in California, the nation's most populous state, which has passed seven million recorded cases. — With reports from Agence France-Presse