The Mnet Asian Music Awards, K-pop’s annual year-end awards show, have announced nominees for their 28th edition. Launched in 1999 and rebranded as the MAMA Awards in 2022, the genre’s most closely watched ceremony is organised by entertainment giant CJ ENM through its music channel Mnet.
Winners are chosen by a combination of an expert jury’s votes, streaming and sales data, and fan involvement. The nominee list for this year includes, BLACKPINK, Taeyang, Hwasa, TOMORROW X TOGETHER, BTS, and Stray Kids as contenders for Artist of the Year – with the last two as prominent nominees across the ceremony, after sitting out the 2027 Grammy Awards in protest of the “Asian Pop” category.
Last year’s four grand prizes went to G-Dragon for Artist of the Year, Stray Kids for Album of the Year (Karma), ROSÉ and Bruno Mars for Song of the Year (“APT.”) and ENHYPEN for Fans’ Choice of the Year.
From fan campaigns to win predictions across X and K-pop subreddits, the fan choice voting buzz is in full swing. Here’s everything you need to know about the ceremony which will b e held at the end of this year.
From Mnet to MAMA
The awards began in 1999 as the Mnet Music Video Festival. With its expansion outside South Korea in 2009 and being hosted across Asia – Macau, Singapore, Hong Kong – it was renamed as the MAMA Awards.
The reach has kept widening. The 2024 edition was the first held outside Asia entirely, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, followed by an Osaka leg. Each edition carries a theme: 2022 was “K-POP World Citizenship,” the 2023 edition was about “One I Born,” 2024 was “Big Blur: What is Real?” and 2025 was “Hear My Roar: uh-heung“.
The 2026 MAMAs
This year’s theme is “A Music Interstellar,” a stage that brings music and outer space together. The ceremony will be held over two days on November 20-21, 2026 and is presented by Visa at Kyocera Dome Osaka and streams worldwide on Mnet Plus.
CJ ENM has announced 12 performers for the ceremony so far. Seven perform on 20 November: ALPHA DRIVE ONE, BABYMONSTER, ENHYPEN, ILLIT, INI, NCT WISH and RESCENE. Five perform on 21 November: CORTIS, KiiiKiii, Le Sserafim, Nayeon of TWICE and ZEROBASEONE. A “MAMA Fan Festa,” with food booths and chances for fans to win tickets to the awards, will also debut across Osaka and virtually via Mnet Plus from November 9 till November 21.
The Nominees
The 255 nominations spread across 21 categories were announced on October 12, and the race for Artist of the Year is crowded. Roughly three dozen acts are in contention, among them BTS, BIGBANG, BLACKPINK, aespa, Stray Kids, ENHYPEN and TOMORROW X TOGETHER. Album of the Year is reserved for releases that sold at least one million copies, and 18 albums made the cut – including BTS’s ARIRANG, BLACKPINK’s DEADLINE, aespa’s LEMONADE and Stray Kids’ THIS & THAT. Song of the Year nominees are yet to be made public.
BTS and Stray Kids earned five nominations at the MAMAs, including Artist of the Year and Album of the Year. This comes after both acts abstained from submitting to the Grammy Awards’ new Best Asian Pop Music Performance category, and are now contending in the at-home ceremony that carried “Asian” in its name from 2009 until its 2022 rebrand.
The Voting
Winners are decided differently by category. Most wins are decided by a combination of a jury of music and pop culture experts with streaming and download figures and album sales.
Only the Fans’ Choice categories are decided by fan votes (without any jury votes), cast through Mnet Plus and X. Round one of Fans’ Choice voting for the Male and Female categories closes on 22 October at 11:59 pm KST. The top 20 in each move to round two from 28 October till 18 November, before the two-day final ceremony on November 20-21 in Osaka.
