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This year's Grammy Award for the best video game soundtrack celebrated some excellent OSTs – but notably, the list of nominees did not include Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Even this year's winner is having a hard time believing that Sandfall's game didn't make the cut.
Austin Wintory, best known as the composer on Journey, won the 2026 Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games and Other Interactive Media thanks to his work on the wonderful hoverboarding indie adventure Sword of the Sea. As Wintory explains in a new YouTube video, he got the news about his win through "shaky wi-fi" on a plane trip.
"Thank you to everyone who supported this project, has supported me in general," Wintory says in a sort of makeshift acceptance speech. "Been very lucky in my career overall these last 20 years in that regard. Working with Giant Squid on a game like Sword of the Sea is a life's dream. Working with Matt Nava and this team for the last more than 15 years has been the joy of a lifetime. I can only hope to be so lucky for that to continue."
But, Wintory adds, "I simply must address a sentiment I know is shared by many" – the fact that Lorien Testard was not among the nominees for his work on Expedition 33.
"I would have been absolutely delighted and overjoyed to stand alongside Lorien in the nominations and then be cheering as he ran up the stage to receive the award," Wintory says. "I guess in that way I say thank you and I happily dedicate this Grammy to him and to Sandfall for a really, really special achievement that I know I echo millions of people around the world in saying it meant a lot to."
Wintory says that Expedition 33's soundtrack is "excellent," and it "not only carries all the gameplay highs and lows and narrative beats beautifully, but the sheer amount of depth and subtlety and nuance to it in addition to just bold in your face gestures are uncountable and immeasurable. Not to mention that Sandfall so beautifully built the game to depend heavily on this score. It's just so rare to see. It's incredible."
Wintory lavishes praise on Expedition 33's "excellent soundtrack," which "carries all the gameplay highs and lows and narrative beats beautifully." And, "on top of that," it's also "a great Spotify record." He argues that part of the proof of the excellence of Expedition 33's soundtrack is that so many love it outside the context of the game.
"It is an amazing album that people love in its own right," Wintory says, "and it actually went a step further even than that. It became a generational-level phenomenon. The fact that there's concert tours selling out all over Europe and people putting it making the music into memes or putting it in their TikTok videos and all kinds of stuff, that is just rare. I mean, it's literally a-once-in-a-generation-level rarity."
Wintory already heaped praise on Expedition 33's soundtrack back in November when the Grammy nominees were first announced, so he's nothing if not consistent. Despite extensive speculation from the game's devoted fans, it's never been clear why Expedition 33 didn't even make the nominee list. Soundtrack publisher Laced Audio pushed a "for your Grammy consideration" for the game on social media last year, but if there's a formal reason for Expedition 33 not to have been considered, it's not been revealed.
