BTS boycotts 2027 Grammys over new Asian Pop category, Grammy board pledges review

All seven BTS members posted an identical statement across their personal social media accounts on July 29. They will not submit music to the 2027 Grammy Awards.

The Recording Academy had just introduced a new category — Best Asian Pop Music Performance — for the 2027 ceremony. It targets pop music created or widely known in Asian markets that makes meaningful use of Asian languages, covering K-pop, J-pop, and C-pop.

BTS wrote in their statement: "We have decided not to submit to this year's Grammys. We hope music can be heard and loved as music itself, rather than being divided by region or language."

The Grammy board responded the following day with an official statement, saying the new category was designed to recognize more artists — not to segregate Asian music. It would reconsider whether the category properly represents the artists it is meant to honor.

The announcement came less than two weeks after BTS played Stade de France in Saint-Denis on July 17 as part of their BTS World Tour Araneta in Paris.

This tension has deeper roots. In 2013, Korean Wave researchers Oh In-gyu (then a professor at Korea University) and Lee Hyo-jeong (Yonsei University) published analysis in Korea Journal arguing that YouTube and internet-based streaming had given Korean artists a way to "bypass" traditional music distributors in the US and Europe. BTS's 2021 performance of Permission to Dance — built around the repeated line "we don't need permission to dance" — at UN headquarters became a reference point for that shift.

Stray Kids, Seventeen, and Enhypen have since followed BTS and BLACKPINK in building global market presence. The Grammy's category decision lands across the wider K-pop industry, not just one group.