Raye performs alongside her grandparents in heartwarming scenes at triumphant Royal Albert Hall show as she says 'hope is family' following Mercury Prize win

She was already on a high from the success of winning the 2026 Mercury Prize on Thursday for her album, This Music May Contain Hope.

And Raye finished her week off on an even more triumphant note as she performed with her family during her sell-out show at London’s Royal Albert Hall on Friday. 

The singer, 28, has found international fame with her hit single, Where Is My Husband? which features her grandmother Agatha Dawson-Amoah uttering the words 'your husband is coming'. 

So during her incredible orchestral show on Friday it was only fitting that Raye brought out Agatha to perform during her encore performance of the show. 

The Brit Award-winning artist halted her performance just as the line was due, as she announced to the crowd: 'Ladies and gentlemen, I need you to erupt in this place. She's been rehearsing her part.' 

Agatha then walked out onto the stage to cheers as Raye asked: 'Are you nervous?' to which Agatha immediately responded: 'I'm fine,' leaving the crowd in hysterics. 

As Agatha said her line, Raye looked confused as the confetti due to explode from the ceiling was slightly paused, causing her to say: 'Oh s*** girl, quickly, say it again,' with the crowd laughing as the moment was repeated. 

Agatha wasn't the only grandparent that Raye performed with on the night, with her grandfather also coming out onto the stage to duet with her during her rendition of Life Boat. 

Raye and the audience both struggled to hold back tears as the pair held hands and performed the song which charts resilience and holding onto hope during the darkest moments of personal struggle.

The illustrious singer-songwriter also took time out from her show to show off her family to the audience, explaining: 'You know what's so beautiful to me - hope is family - so it just made so much sense to have my family all over this album.' 

Walking off stage to her family's seats, she continued: 'This is the family section and look at all you guys. Ladies and gentlemen, my beautiful family.' 

She later performed with her sisters Absolutely and Amma on the single Joy before bringing out other sister Katelyn, who does not perform, for a sweet hug on the stage. 

Earlier in the night, Raye had opened up about the importance of protecting one's mental health, having openly discussed her own struggles over the years. 

Admitting she was worried about forgetting her lyrics, Raye shared: 'You want to do a good job. You start overthinking it so much right until it approaches, then you're like, there it is!

'Something that has always been important to me and in this album, something that mattered so much to me was wanting to be honest, be really candid, that's always been the artist I've chosen to be.

'[Life] is beautiful and ugly, easy and hard. I don't know what parts are easy, maybe breathing.

'And sometimes it's hard to feel the ugly parts - they are promised as a part of this human experience - and I wanted to touch on them.' 

Raye went on to explain her song I Will Overcome was dedicated to a friend who had reached out to her when she was struggling, explaining: 'I'd gotten myself into a little hole where if I wasn't working I wasn't leaving the house.

'I entered a little state of just feeling like there was a thin grey veil over everything, you know, hence the drama of I Will Overcome because sometimes it really does feel like that.

'Sometimes it feels like all the colours have been stripped from your eyes. You wake up and you just see grey and black and white, and I don't wish that for anybody, but it happens to us.

'And in those seasons, the biggest thing I learned was I had to try and choose how to attempt to fight my way out of it.

'Easier said than done, but I did find that music helps and I hope at least there's a song on this album that you can press play on that can maybe help you see a couple of colours here and there.' 

At another stage during the show, Raye addressed the ticket scalpers that used AI bots to flood the pre-sale registration for her one-off show. 

The fiasco meant that 1.8 million applied for just 5,000 seats at Royal Albert Hall. 

Addressing the crowd, Raye said: 'I can't tell you how beautiful it is to see so many familiar faces who have been with me since the start. 

'Guys, we've got to fix this ticket situation because that was... I was DMing you guys! Yeah, it's new times guys.'

Raye was forced to have the sign-up list manually reviewed so 'fans can buy tickets at face value' after she feared ticket touts would relist seats at outrageous prices.

She took action after there were 'hundreds of thousands of fake registrations' for the one-off gig which will see the singer reimagine her sophomore album, March's This Music May Contain Hope, with the Heritage Orchestra and Flames Collective.

Raye wrote on X: 'We received 1.8 million sign-ups for 5000 seats for This Symphony May Contain Hope.

'Sadly our sign-up process was overwhelmed by scalpers, using AI bots to create hundreds of thousands of fake registrations.

'It is a new world we are living in now, I have never witnessed bots on this scale. It is so important to me that fans can buy tickets at the face value price.'

Raye and her team have decided to take extra steps to 'manually review' the list to try and make sure only real fans are part of the presale.

She explained: 'Therefore rather than risk opening a presale that scalpers could exploit, we felt the best and safest solution for this specific show was to manually review the sign-up list to identify a shortlist of people we believe are real fans.'

Raye explained that 'those selected will receive their presale link and code by email' and those without the code would have to try when the remaining tickets went on general sale.

Raye concluded: 'I'm not sure what the future holds for ticketing, I do know this experience has really opened my eyes.

'Me and my team are going to think really hard about what we can do in the future. Lots of love, Raye.'

Following the ticket drama, Raye announced she was  taking her orchestral show on tour. 

Fresh from selling out London’s Royal Albert Hall, Raye is set to take her This Symphony May Contain Hope concert to the world stage, with performances in the UK, China, Switzerland, Italy, the USA, Australia and Ghana.

To celebrate the announcement of the seven shows, Raye released a special orchestral mix of Click Clack Symphony, featuring Hans Zimmer, available now across streaming platforms and on 12-inch vinyl. 

Raye had huge ambitions for This Music May Contain Hope following the success of 2023's My 21st Century Blues, and back in May she revealed how the pressure she put on herself took a real toll.

She told Billboard: 'There just comes a time in your life where, like, you have to, or you choose to, prioritise something over another, so I think in my case, like, work has really been my life for the last year, two years, three years.

'But I think this last year with this album, and the amount of touring, and just the vibe in general, I've really definitely pushed myself to, like, my limit.'

Reflecting on the intense schedule, she added that she was 'really happy' to have worked as hard as she did, but she wanted 'a little bit more balance' after the LP dropped, focusing on 'shows and rest time'. 

Raye said the pressure was entirely self‑driven, explaining that the scale of the project was something she chose to take on.

She said: 'By the way, like, I was the one who chose to make an album like this, and I was the one who had all these ambitious goals and ideas for it, and things I wanted to do and achieve.'

The star, whose real name is Rachel Keen, was signed by record company Polydor in 2014 and rose to fame at 19 years old by featuring on Jax Jones' You Don't Know Me.

But five years into her record deal, Raye explained she was becoming disillusioned with the industry, as record executives pushed her into projects she didn't want to take part in and withheld her debut album.

It was during a stint living and recording in Los Angeles in 2019 that the star hit rock bottom as she blames 'a large collection of traumas, frustrations and substance abuse, misuse, or whatever, that just kind of piled up and that year was just one blurry mess'.

Calling it 'a pretty dark year', the London-born star explained how she wasn't close to most of her family at this time, apart from her sister Lauren – known professionally as Amma – who came to live with her for a while.

In a joint interview for CBS' Sirius radio, Amma explained how 'traumatic' it was to see her sister spiral.

'It would be me that had to double check that she was okay and yeah, she was still alive frankly,' she said. 

Raye was asked during the interview whether she was using 'drugs' at that time, she nodded and replied: 'Yeah other stuff,' whilst explaining that she still drinks.

'Interestingly there was a time when I was just not sober at all. I was really in the deep end,' she explained, adding that it was her grandmother texting her a bible verse about sobriety that helped start her recovery.

'She didn't know anything that was going on,' she explained. 'I was very good at hiding what I was going through and what I was doing from my family. But that Bible verse kicked me in the teeth a bit,' she said. 

'I was at a session in LA, I just remember I went to the bathroom and I shed some tears and I was like, 'I need to start getting it together here'.

In 2021, after years spent apart from her family, Raye hired her parents Paul and Sarah - with Paul serving as her manager and her mother Sarah helping with management tasks. Meanwhile she regularly performs with Amma and her other sister Absolutely.

Raye has spoken openly about her years signed with Polydor, claiming she had 'albums on albums of music sat in folders collecting dust, songs I am now giving away to A list artists because I am still awaiting confirmation that I am good enough to release an album.'

In June 2021, Raye revealed that her record label had been withholding her debut album for several years and she went on a hiatus.