BTS are the favorites to win Best K-Pop at the VMAs … but still no Video of the Year nomination

Not much time has passed since we opened our MTV Video Music Awards predictions on July 26, but there’s already a clear and overwhelming front-runner to win Best K-Pop: BTS of course. They’ve dominated this category for years, and in fact rarely lose at the VMAs when nominated for fan-voted awards. So why have they never been nominated for Video of the Year?

To date BTS have won nine Moon Person statues at the VMAs. That includes three wins in a row for Best K-Pop for “Boy with Luv” featuring Halsey (2019), “On” (2020), and “Butter” (2021). The award was established in 2019, so BTS have never lost. They have also never lost Group of the Year, which was re-established in 2019 and produced three straight victories for the septet. Their remaining three victories were Best Choreography and Best Pop in 2020 for “On” and Song of Summer for “Butter” in 2021.

The only three fan-voted awards they’ve lost were Best Collaboration for “Boy with Luv” in 2019 (Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello‘s duet “Senorita” was victorious), Best Pop for “Butter” in 2021 (that went to Justin Bieber‘s “Peaches”), and Song of the Year for “Dynamite” in 2021 (Olivia Rodrigo took that for “Drivers License”). Anyone who has gotten the better of them at the VMAs should be doubly proud because it takes a lot to overcome the BTS Army.

But despite their success with MTV fans, BTS have generally been restricted to genre categories and the group award that is decided in a separate social media vote. They have never been nominated for Video of the Year or Artist of the Year, and they were only once in contention for Song of the Year.

They’re not represented very much this year either, scoring only two fan-voted noms for Best K-Pop and Best Metaverse Performance. They’re also likely to return to the Group of the Year race when those nominations are announced at a later date. But besides those they’re only up for two professional categories that are decided by music insiders: Best Choreography for “Permission to Dance” and Best Visual Effects for “My Universe,” their collab with Coldplay.

And this might be the VMAs’ last chance to award them since they recently announced they were going on hiatus to pursue solo careers. Do you think the VMA nominators missed a golden opportunity for a big send-off for the Korean trailblazers?

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