Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi and Birmingham City Football Club chairman Tom Wagner are among the recipients of the 2026 Lord Mayor's Awards, Birmingham City Council announced on Wednesday. The annual honours, presented in a ceremony at the Council House next month, recognise figures judged to have made distinctive contributions to the city.
Mr Iommi, born in Aston in 1948, is honoured for what the citation describes as his role in "making Birmingham the birthplace of heavy metal and a global capital of guitar music". The 78-year-old guitarist, a founding member of Black Sabbath, has spent much of his recent career supporting local music education through the Heavy Metal Heart charity.
Mr Wagner, the American investor whose Knighthead Capital consortium bought Birmingham City in 2023, is recognised for the club's promotion from League One and for the broader investment programme around a planned new stadium and sports quarter at the Wheels site in Bordesley Green. The project, costed at more than £3 billion, is one of the largest single redevelopment plans in the city since the post-war rebuilding of the Bull Ring.
Other recipients include the public-health director Dr Justin Varney, recognised for the city's pandemic-era programme; community organiser Maxine McLeod of the African Caribbean Millennium Centre; and the Edgbaston-based bowler Sophie Ecclestone, named in advance of the Women's T20 World Cup which Edgbaston will co-host next month.
The Lord Mayor, Councillor Zafar Iqbal, said the 2026 list "reflects the breadth and the contradiction of Birmingham — the second city is a place of heavy industry and high culture, of working-class roots and global ambition, and the recipients all embody some part of that".