The Latin Grammy Awards (stylized as Latin GRAMMYs) are awards presented by the Latin Recording Academy to honor excellence in the Latin music industry. The awards recognize outstanding achievements in recordings primarily in Spanish or Portuguese, released anywhere in the world but associated with Ibero-America—a region defined by the Academy to include Latin America, Spain, Portugal, and the Latino communities in the United States and Canada. Works recorded in other recognized languages or dialects of Ibero-America, such as Catalan, Basque, Galician, Valencian, Nahuatl, Guarani, Quechua, or Mayan, may also be eligible through a majority vote.
The Latin Grammy Awards follow a peer-based nomination and voting process, similar to that of the regular Grammy Awards, with winners selected by members of the Latin Recording Academy. The inaugural ceremony took place on September 13, 2000, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles and was broadcast by CBS, marking the first primarily Spanish-language primetime program on an English-language U.S. network.
