BTS VMAs 2026 Sweep: Three Trophies, Three Kinds of Win

Three nominations, three trophies, and not one of the seven members in the Peacock Theater.

The BTS VMAs 2026 result is a clean sweep. At the MTV Video Music Awards in Los Angeles on Sunday, September 27, BTS won Song of the Year and Best K-Pop for "SWIM," plus Best Group — every category it was nominated in, according to Soompi and the Korea Herald. Song of the Year makes BTS the first K-pop group to win it. Side by side, though, the three trophies are three different kinds of win: one in an open field, one inside the genre, one put to a fan vote. And they landed about two months after BTS opted out of the next Grammys.

Three trophies, three different fields

The three-way split. Song of the Year put "SWIM" in the night's open field. Best K-Pop was a six-act race inside the genre. Best Group was one of MTV's "social categories," decided by fan voting on MTV's Instagram Stories from September 21 to 24, per Soompi. It is the only fan-voted one of the three in our sources, and the one that set a record.

Category	Nominated alongside BTS	What the win adds
Song of the Year	Ella Langley, "Choosin' Texas"; HUNTR/X, "Golden"; RAYE, "WHERE IS MY HUSBAND!"; Madonna and Sabrina Carpenter, "Bring Your Love" (the four both Gulf News and the Korea Times list)	First K-pop group to win it; second Asian act, after Rosé with Bruno Mars last year (Korea Times)
Best K-Pop	BLACKPINK, CORTIS, KATSEYE, LE SSERAFIM (feat. J-hope), LISA	The same song wins its genre category on the same night
Best Group (fan vote, Sept 21–24)	BLACKPINK, CORTIS, KATSEYE, FLO, Fuerza Regida, Geese, Twenty One Pilots	Fifth win, after four straight in 2019–2022; most-awarded act in the category

The Song of the Year line carries the history. According to the Korea Times, BTS is the second Asian act to win it, after BLACKPINK's Rosé took it last year for "APT." with Bruno Mars — two years running, first as a duet, now as a group's own single. The field it beat included HUNTR/X's "Golden," the song from the film behind Netflix House's KPop Demon Hunters experience.

"SWIM" came in with the numbers. The lead single of ARIRANG, released in March, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart dated April 4 and reached No. 2 on the UK Official Singles Chart. The Korea Times adds 25 consecutive days atop Spotify's Daily Top Songs Global chart, March 20 to April 13; the Korea Herald notes it had already won Song of the Summer at the American Music Awards in May.

Another Asian first came the same night. LISA won Best Pop for "Dream" featuring Kentaro Sakaguchi — the first Asian solo artist to win it, per the Korea Times, six years after BTS became, by the same paper's count, the first Asian act to win Best Pop, with "ON" in 2020.

Best Group: 2019 to 2022, then 2026

The record sits in the fan-voted category. The Best Group trophy is BTS's fifth, after four straight wins from 2019 to 2022, and makes it the most-awarded act in the category's history, per the Korea Times and the Manila Times. The Korea Herald fills in the gap: after that run, the members suspended group activity for military service. The full group came back in March with ARIRANG, its first album since what the Korea Times calls "a nearly four-year hiatus." The streak was interrupted, not extended.

The ballot is the second comparison. Best K-Pop had six nominees and Best Group eight, and four acts were on both: BTS, BLACKPINK, CORTIS and KATSEYE. The genre race added LE SSERAFIM, nominated for a track featuring BTS's own J-hope, and LISA; the group race added FLO, Fuerza Regida, Geese and Twenty One Pilots. BTS beat the same three acts twice in one night — once in a K-pop category, once in a fan vote shared with four acts that were not on the K-pop ballot.

CORTIS got the other side of that: three nominations in, none out. BTS took Best K-Pop and Best Group, and Best New Artist went to Sienna Spiro, according to Gulf News's winners list. Our piece on Martin of CORTIS traces the rookie group's road to that ballot.

What the BTS VMAs 2026 sweep says about the Grammy row

The Korea Times sets the sweep beside a decision made about two months earlier: BTS declined to submit its work in any category for the 69th Grammy Awards, in 2027. It followed the Recording Academy's June announcement of a new Best Asian Pop Music Performance category, which, the paper says, drew criticism for separating Asian acts from the General Field awards.

The VMAs ran both models on one ballot. Best K-Pop is a genre category; Song of the Year sits beside it, not in place of it, and on Sunday one song won both.

BTS answered in writing, through BIGHIT MUSIC. In Soompi's translation, the group called ARIRANG "an album that is like a new beginning for us, so these awards are even more meaningful," credited Song of the Year to "everyone who loved our music," and ended on the lineup: "our seven members will continue to showcase good music and performances together."

Quick answers

What did BTS win at the 2026 VMAs?

Three awards, every category it was nominated in: Song of the Year and Best K-Pop for "SWIM," and Best Group, on September 27 at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles.

Did BTS attend the 2026 VMAs?

No. The Korea Herald, the Korea Times and the Manila Times report that the group did not attend; it thanked fans through a BIGHIT MUSIC statement.

How many times has BTS won Best Group at the VMAs?

Five: four straight from 2019 to 2022, then 2026. Per the Korea Times and the Manila Times, that makes BTS the most-awarded act in the category.

Why didn't BTS submit to the 2027 Grammys?

According to the Korea Times, BTS declined to submit after the Recording Academy announced a Best Asian Pop Music Performance category in June, criticised for separating Asian acts from the General Field.

Mina's Take

The record is Best Group, but the trophy I'd frame is Song of the Year. A fan vote measures turnout, and nobody doubts ARMY's. Song of the Year put "SWIM" up against Madonna, RAYE and the KPop Demon Hunters song, and it won there on the same night it won the K-pop category. That is the Grammy argument, settled at another show: a genre category is fine next to the main field and a problem only in place of it. What most coverage skips is that the Recording Academy is under no obligation to notice. My call: Best Asian Pop Music Performance is still on the 69th Grammys list, unchanged, on December 31, 2026. If it is renamed, merged or dropped by then, the pressure worked faster than I expect.

What to watch next

• Friday, October 2, Bogotá. BTS WORLD TOUR 'ARIRANG', on the road since April, opens its South American leg, then moves to Lima, Santiago, Buenos Aires and São Paulo: 14 shows in five cities, per the Korea Times and the Korea Herald. Our ARMY tourism breakdown covers what the tour's earlier stops meant for visitor spending.