K-pop hits 12.3% of 2026 VMA nominees — highest share in 5 years

K-pop's biggest VMA footprint yet

K-pop artists hold 19 of the 154 confirmed nominee slots at the 2026 MTV Video Music Awards. That's 12.3% of the total field and the highest share recorded in the five years since 2022. The climb has been steady: 8.9% in 2022, 10.8% in 2023, 8.8% in 2024, 10.3% in 2025, and now 12.3%.

MTV finalized the full nominee list on September 18 after announcing 33 additional slots across four social categories: Best Group, Best Long Form Video, Best Album, and Song of Summer.

Two K-pop acts in main categories — only the second time since 2022

BTS got a Song of the Year nomination. Cortis, a rookie act, landed Best New Artist. Two separate K-pop acts nominated in main VMA categories at the same time has happened just once before—in 2022, when BTS and SEVENTEEN both made the ballot.

Lisa, who has been working with major U.S. label RCA, earned nominations in both Best K-pop and Best Pop. Jisoo is up for Best Visual Effects for the Eyes Closed music video, a collaboration with ZAYN.

Genre-specific categories stripped out, the growth is sharper

Remove the genre and regional brackets—Best Latin, Best Country, Best K-pop—and the numbers shift dramatically. K-pop's share of the remaining general competition categories rose from 5.0% in 2022 to 11.1% in 2026. That's roughly 2.2 times in five years.

The VMA, which launched in 1984, evaluates music video completeness across choreography, direction, cinematography, editing, and visual effects alongside audio performance. K-pop's production pipeline tends to run deep in exactly those disciplines.