Summer Walker, Bebe Rexha among Billboard Canada honourees

Billboard Canada said Summer Walker will receive its Global Visionary Award and Bebe Rexha its Global Hitmaker honour at the Women in Music celebration at Rebel in Toronto on Nov. 24.

The announcement, published Oct. 21, fills out a lineup of six honourees for the Toronto event, which Billboard Canada called its biggest yet.

Cardi B was previously announced as the first Billboard Canada Global Woman of the Year. Billboard Canada said Rexha is being recognized as both an artist and a songwriter.

Melissa Bubb-Clarke, described by Billboard Canada as Live Nation’s chief commercial officer, is the Executive of the Year. Kristy Fletcher, president of MusiCounts and chief operating officer of CARAS, the organization behind the Juno Awards, receives the Impact Award.

The Rising Star award goes to Chxrry, the Scarborough, Ont.-born R&B artist, who Billboard Canada said was the first female act signed to The Weeknd’s XO label about four years ago. Billboard Canada said she is the second Canadian artist to receive the award, after LU KALA in 2024.

In its Oct. 20 profile of Chxrry, Billboard Canada said her album U, Me & My Ego came out in May and that her song Main Character has more than 200,000 TikTok videos and more than five million global streams. Her debut project, The Other Side, was released in 2022.

The lineup has a clear Canadian thread beyond the Toronto venue. Fletcher leads the organization that runs the Junos, whose submissions close Nov. 5 after a category overhaul, and Bubb-Clarke oversees commercial operations at the company that promotes many of the arena and stadium tours coming to Canada in 2027.

Tickets are available through Billboard Canada’s event page. The organizer did not list prices in the announcement.

Billboard Canada is the organizer and the only source for the lineup so far, so details could change before the event. No performers were named in the announcement.

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