Queen has been awarded the prestigious Polar Music Prize 2025. The ceremony and banquet took place at The Grand Hotel in Stockholm, Sweden and was hosted by mezzo-soprano and journalist Boel Adler. King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden presented the prize to Queen, Herbie Hancock and Barbara Hannigan. Laureates received prize money of one million Swedish Krona (approx. £77k GBP and $102k USD).
The evening featured live music from a number of artists, including singer/songwriter and frontman of Queen, Adam Lambert, who performed the band’s hits “Who Wants to Live Forever” and “Another One Bites the Dust.” Ghost took to the stage with Opeth guitarist Fredrik Åkesson for an electrifying rendition of “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
The Polar Music Prize was founded in 1989 by the late Stig “Stikkan” Anderson, the publisher, lyricist and manager of ABBA, to celebrate excellence in music. Previous recipients of the Polar Music Prize include Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Joni Mitchell, Peter Gabriel, Chuck Berry, Nile Rogers, Metallica, Max Martin and many more.
“When we started our band…we had ambitions, but never dreamed of the journey that was to follow. We were fortunate in the fact that our four wildly different personalities came together to achieve a wonderful chemistry,” Queen’s Roger Taylor said. “The Polar Music Prize is exceptional in the fact that unlike other awards it recognises the entirety of an artiste’s career. What an honour to be included in the glittering cavalcade of previous laureates. True Olympian company indeed. We are so proud to be the recipients of this incredibly prestigious award.”
Brian May thanked Sweden on behalf of Queen, and added: “In this special moment, I contemplate how that younger Brian May in 1974 would have felt if he knew that we would be living this kind of dream 50 years in the future.”
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