VincyMas 2026
Three in a Row: Problem Child Takes the Road March Again With “Party Time”
The Carnival Development Corporation released the official results on Wednesday. Shertz James has now won the Road March in 2024, 2025 and 2026. But he won it with 53 points, half of last year’s total, and he is nowhere in the Soca Monarch placings. The road and the stage have come apart.
Shertz “Problem Child” James has won the VincyMas Road March for a third consecutive year. The Carnival Development Corporation, in results signed by chief executive Rodney Small and dated 8 July 2026, placed “Party Time” first with 53 points at the close of a season staged under the theme The Great Escape.
Behind him, a rarity. Lamar “Blama” Allen with “Polygamy” and Jasper “Jasper YMC” Alexander with “Rum Island” finished level on 38 points and share second place.
| Position | Artiste | Song | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | Shertz “Problem Child” James | Party Time | 53 |
| 2nd | Lamar “Blama” Allen | Polygamy | 38 |
| 2nd | Jasper “Jasper YMC” Alexander | Rum Island | 38 |
The three-peat
The Road March is not a competition an artist can lobby for. It is counted, not judged in the ordinary sense: the title goes to the song played most often at the official points along the Mardi Gras route through Kingstown. It is the closest thing this country has to a plebiscite. Bands vote with their trucks. DJs vote with their needles. The crowd votes with its feet.
Problem Child has now carried that vote three years running. “Carnival Jumbie” took it in 2024. In 2025 he did something almost nobody has done, finishing first and second in the same year, with “Fraid Horn” on a perfect 100 and “Pong Pong” on 97. Esron “Spielberg” Culzac was a distant third on 74.
A year ago the soca commentary site Sokah2Soca ended its report on that double win with a line that now reads like prophecy, telling readers to watch for 2026 and the triple play. He has it.
Bands vote with their trucks. DJs vote with their needles. The crowd votes with its feet. Three years running, they have all voted the same way.
The number nobody has explained
Now the second story, and it is not a small one.
In 2025, the winning song scored 100. The runner-up scored 97. Third place scored 74. In 2026, the winning song scored 53, and two songs tied on 38.
Read those figures beside each other and something has changed. Either the basis of the count has been altered, or the road itself has fragmented, with plays spread across a wider field of songs than in any recent year. Both explanations are plausible. Neither has been offered.
Questions for the CDC
- Was the method of counting plays at judging points changed for 2026?
- Were the number or location of judging points altered?
- How many songs received points in total, and what was the spread?
- What is the procedure for a tie, and does it affect prize distribution between the two second-placed artistes?
- Are “Rum,” the Soca Monarch winning song, and “Rum Island,” second on the road, the same recording?
This is not an accusation. It is arithmetic. A winning score of 53 in a season immediately following a perfect 100 is the sort of thing a national cultural institution should be able to explain in a paragraph, and the explanation may well be entirely mundane. Vincypowa News is seeking that explanation and will publish the CDC’s response in full.
The road and the stage came apart
There is a second fact in the same CDC release that deserves to sit beside the 53.
Problem Child did not contest the Soca Monarch. He did not enter it, did not sing for it, and won the road anyway. The crown went to Jasper “Jasper YMC” Alexander with “Rum” on 373 points, ahead of Kevon “Sick O” Shallow’s “Shut yo mouth” on 372, a margin of a single point. Claydon “Dymez” Roache and Elrico “DaPixel” Hunte took third, Shannan “Kelly J” John fourth.
Jasper YMC then tied for second on the road with a song the CDC lists as “Rum Island.” Whether “Rum” and “Rum Island” are the same recording under two titles, or two songs by the same artist, is not clear from the release. It matters. If it is one song, Jasper YMC held the crown and came within fifteen points of the road with a single track, and that is the story of the season rather than a footnote to it.
One man wins the crown by a single point. Another declines to compete for it and takes the road for the third year running. These are two different careers, built for two different rooms.
This is not a criticism of anyone. The Soca Monarch is a stage competition, judged, with a set and a band and a panel. The Road March is a count of what the trucks played. An artist can build a career for either room, and Shertz James has spent three years demonstrating that the second room can be won without entering the first.
Blama and Jasper YMC finishing level on 38 is worth its own note. The Road March rewards saturation, and a dead heat suggests two songs that held the route in roughly equal measure through the day.
Second place in the Road March is not a consolation. In the year Problem Child scored 100, second place scored 97, and it was still Problem Child. This year two other artists reached it on their own songs.
The season
VincyMas 2026 ran from Friday 26 June to Tuesday 7 July under the theme The Great Escape, launched in April at Independence Park. Mardi Gras closed the festival on Tuesday. The CDC published its official results the following day.
The Road March has been recorded here since 1971. Three consecutive titles is a run few artists in that span have managed, and Vincypowa News is checking the CDC’s own archive to establish exactly where Shertz James now sits. Whatever the count says about the road this year, it says nothing ambiguous about who owned it.
Source: Carnival Development Corporation, VincyMas 2026 Results, dated 8 July 2026, signed by CEO Rodney Small, seen in full by Vincypowa News. Historical results from CDC records, Searchlight, Soca News and Sokah2Soca. Vincypowa News is an independent Caribbean news outlet based in St Vincent and the Grenadines.