Key Takeaways
- Chaka Khan will receive the Classic Soul Honor at the 2026 Soul Train Awards, capping a year that also brought her a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and her 13th album, Chakzilla.
- The honor celebrates Khan’s five-decade career, including Rufus classics like “Ain’t Nobody,” the solo anthem “I’m Every Woman,” 11 Grammys, and eight No. 1 R&B hits.
- Anthony Anderson will host the ceremony’s Nov. 27 return from Chicago, airing at 8 p.m. ET/PT on BET and CBS after the awards went on indefinite hiatus last year.
Chaka Khan is adding another major honor to an already packed year. The 11-time Grammy winner will receive the Classic Soul Honor at the 2026 Soul Train Awards, putting her at the center of the ceremony’s return to television just months after she collected a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and released her 13th studio album, Chakzilla.
BET announced the honor on Thursday, October 22, recognizing Khan’s five-decade run across funk, R&B, soul, and pop. According to People, the 73-year-old will be celebrated during the Nov. 27 broadcast, which airs at 8 p.m. ET/PT on BET and CBS.
Details surrounding her tribute have not been revealed, while additional performers and special guests are expected to be announced in the coming weeks.
Khan is still recording, collaborating, and taking her catalog to festival stages. Released earlier this year, Chakzilla features Snoop Dogg, Sia, and Lenny Kravitz. Khan said her childhood love of Godzilla movies inspired the album’s title, and the project marked her return to pop music.
“I just am hopeful that everyone really likes the music and loves where I’m coming from with singing pop again, which I love to do,” she said before the album’s release. “I just hope everyone’s really happy and really loves what they hear.”
Long before Chakzilla, Khan helped redraw the boundaries between funk and soul as Rufus’s frontwoman. The group produced classics including “Tell Me Something Good,” “Sweet Thing,” and “Ain’t Nobody” before Khan launched her solo career with 1978’s Chaka.
That album delivered “I’m Every Woman,” one of the records that helped turn her unmistakable voice into a cross-generational force. She has since earned eight No. 1 hits on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2023.
BET President Louis Carr called Khan “the embodiment of soul music,” pointing to both her work with Rufus and the solo catalog that followed. “She has continually expanded the possibilities of R&B and soul while inspiring generations of artists to find and own their voices,” Carr said. “Honoring Chaka is a celebration of the music and cultural legacy that Soul Train has always embodied.”
That legacy is getting its own relaunch. BET placed the Soul Train Music Awards on indefinite hiatus last year, but the ceremony is now returning with a shortened name, Spotify as its exclusive streaming partner, and Chicago—the city where Don Cornelius launched Soul Train in 1971—as its host city.
Anthony Anderson will lead the broadcast, which will also air on BET Her, VH1, MTV2, and Logo.
