BTS boycotts the Grammys. This is part of a long history of category controversies: NPR
BTS’s Jin, Jung Kook, Suga, Jimin, j-hope, V and RM perform on stage during the 2026 iHeartRadio Music Festival.
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Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic/FilmMagic, Inc.
Almost every year, the Recording Academy updates the terminology and categories it uses to recognize musicians at its annual Grammy Awards. In 2026, five new categories were introduced, including one award that received backlash from one of the world’s most popular groups: BTS.
The Best Asian Pop Performance category, which will feature its first list of nominees next week, was created to recognize “contemporary popular music originating in or widely recognized in Asian markets, including K-Pop, J-Pop and C-Pop.” But just over a month after the Recording Academy revealed its plans for the award, which requires “significant use of one or more Asian languages” to be eligible, K-pop group BTS shared its own announcement on social media.
“We have decided not to submit nominations to the Grammys this year. Rather than dividing the music by region or language, we hope that the music itself can be heard and loved for what it is,” the group wrote. “We are always grateful to (our fandom) ARMY and everyone who is always with us.”
The group is in the midst of a massive comeback after a years-long hiatus from its members’ mandatory military service in South Korea. They released the album Arirang in March and embarked on a sold-out world tour shortly after. Following BTS’s statement, K-pop group Stray Kids also announced their intention not to submit.
Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. responded to BTS’ statement on Instagram, writing that he was saddened but respected the group’s decision.
“I want to clarify something that seems to be getting lost in the conversation,” Mason Jr. wrote. “The Asian Pop category was created to celebrate the depth, diversity and extraordinary growth of art pop from Asia. The spirit of this new category is to shine a spotlight on these important artists. More categories means more artists’ work is recognized. It’s never about dividing, but expanding the number of people recognized by our 15,000 Grammy voters Awards.”
The back-and-forth between BTS and the Recording Academy marks the latest thread in a longer, complicated line of the Grammys’ attempts to become more inclusive.
K-pop as a signifier
BTS has been nominated for five Grammys in the past, including several nods for best pop duo/group performance, but has never won. Mathieu Berbiguier, visiting assistant professor of Korean studies at Carnegie Mellon University, says the new category is a double-edged sword: On the one hand, it’s an opportunity to highlight music from across the Asian continent, which is growing in popularity as streaming and social media blur the boundaries of global listening habits. At the same time, Bebiguier says the category appears to be an attempt to sideline the gains K-pop has made in recent years compared to general categories. (This past February, the viral hit “Golden” from the film Demon Hunters KPop became the first K-pop song to win a Grammy).
Jeong Hoon Seo, Mark Sonnenblick, EJAE, Yu Han Lee, Park Hong Jun and Hee Dong Nam, winners of Best Song Written for Visual Media for “Golden” (from KPop Demon Hunters), pose in the press room during the 68th GRAMMY Awards at Crypto.com Arena on February 1, 2026 in Los Angeles, California.
Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic/FilmMagic, Inc.
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Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic/FilmMagic, Inc.
“Since the term K-pop itself was not created in Korea, it is a category that was created differently than other genres,” Berbiguier explains. “It’s hard to look at that as a positive thing, because it kind of means we want to recognize you, but at the same time in a separate category, so that it doesn’t get confused with what’s supposed to be mainstream.”
Berbiguier highlights the controversy behind K-pop as a label, a catch-all signifier used by the foreign entertainment industry in an attempt to define popular music in South Korea that also applies to artists from other countries (see “global girl group” Katseye). Berbiguier himself defines K-pop not as a genre, but as a system in which young people are recruited from the Korean pop industry, receive extensive training in singing, acting or dancing and then make their official debut either as a solo artist or as a member of a group.
What is considered K-pop is slippery, he explains, and even those within the system are considering shedding the label. Bang Si-Hyuk, founder of South Korean conglomerate HYBE (which is behind several successful K-pop groups, including BTS), said in a 2023 interview with Economic journal Maeil that the “K” might need to be dropped in order to continue expanding the genre’s global appeal. RM, one of the members of BTS, said rolling stone that it is an “important debate” for the music industry.
“This shows that the agenda is not the same on the side of K-pop entertainment companies and the Grammys, because the Grammys probably see it as a gateway to greater international recognition,” explains Berbiguier. “But then for the K-pop entertainment companies, that’s not what they want. They want to be recognized as a whole.”
A long and complicated history of inclusion
Since the Awards’ inception in 1959, the Recording Academy has been criticized for the way it racializes and represents popular music in the United States and abroad. Only 12 black artists have won the year’s most prestigious album award, and black musicians have long denounced the Academy for placing them in smaller categories that they say minimize their contributions. The Academy did not recognize the rise of hip-hop until 1988, when it first introduced the Best Rap Performance category, but quickly sparked controversy when it chose not to televise the award during the 1989 ceremony. As a result, artists including LL Cool J, Public Enemy and DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince – who ultimately won the Grammy – boycotted the ceremony in protest.
In 2016, Frank Ocean refused to submit his chart-topping album, Blondfor consideration, calling the awards’ nomination and voting system “dated” and calling it his “Colin Kaepernick” moment. The pop auteur had previously been nominated seven times in multiple categories and won twice, including Best Urban Contemporary Album in 2013. In 2020, Tyler, the Creator won his first gold gramophone for Best Rap Album for Igor. At a backstage press conference, he said he was grateful for the award, but felt the category he was placed in was a sort of “backhanded compliment.”
“It’s a shame that every time we – and I mean guys that look like me – do something genre-bending or whatever, they always put it in a rap or urban category. I don’t like that word ‘urban’ – it’s just a politically correct way of saying the N-word to me,” Tyler said.
Tyler, the Creator poses in the press room with the award for Best Rap Album for Igor at the 62nd Annual GRAMMY Awards at Staples Center on January 26, 2020 in Los Angeles, California.
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Six months later, the Academy announced that it would drop the term “urban” and rename it Best Progressive R&B Album in an effort to be more accurate and inclusive. John Vilanova, a music scholar and journalism professor at Lehigh University, says there has always been an underlying tension between the narrative the Grammys want to tell about the music industry and the reality of what’s happening in the culture.
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