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KATSEYE Scores ‘Best K-Pop’ VMA Nod Despite Not Being K-Pop And Singing Entirely In English
Hollywood & Entertainment KATSEYE Scores ‘Best K-Pop’ VMA Nod Despite Not Being K-Pop And Singing Entirely In English By Hannah Abraham ,
Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Hannah Abraham covers entertainment, culture and business. Follow Author Aug 18, 2026, 04:50pm EDT Aug 18, 2026, 05:34pm EDT --:-- / --:-- This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more . This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more . Summary HYBE x Geffen's KATSEYE earned nominations for Best K-Pop and Best Choreography at the 2026 MTV VMAs for "Pinky Up," reigniting debate on K-pop's definition for awards. Created as a K-pop-style group for Western audiences, KATSEYE's nomination is controversial: only one member is Korean, they don't identify as K-pop, and their music, including "Pinky Up," contains no Korean lyrics. This mirrors a pattern in the VMA's K-Pop category, which has a history of recognizing English-language tracks by artists with increasingly tenuous links to Korean music. The Grammys' new "Best Asian Pop Music Performance" category, requiring Asian language use, further highlights the inconsistency. Critics urge Western awards to establish clear, consistent definitions for K-pop categories.
HYBE x Geffen group KATSEYE have been nominated for Best K-Pop at the 2026 MTV Video Music Awards (VMA), and instead of pinkies, eyebrows are going up at this decision. The global act is nominated alongside BLACKPINK, BTS, CORTIS, LE SSERAFIM, and LISA.
They have also received a Best Choreography nomination for the same track, “Pinky Up”. The nominations arrive at a moment when the question of what actually qualifies as K-pop, especially for awards purposes, is a subject of contention.
For the unitiated, KATSEYE, comprising members Daniela Avanzini, Lara Raj, Megan Skiendiel, Yoonchae Jeung and the currently hiatus-ed Sophia Laforteza and Manon Bannerman , was created by HYBE and Geffen Records through reality competition The Debut:Dream Academy reality competition as a deliberate attempt to build a K-pop-style group for Western markets.
If ones squints hard enough, perhaps it is possible to see how the VMAs arrived at this conclusion. KATSEYE does seem K-pop adjacent, considering that their training, incorporation of high-powered choreography, parts of their target audience and much of their marketing techniques overlap with the K-pop system.
However, only one of their members (Yoonchae) is Korean, the group has never introduced themselves as K-pop, and it is plain as day that zero of their released music has featured Korean lyrics.
This including the song that just scored an MTV VMA nomination for ‘Best K-pop’.
While the winners of the VMAs are chosen by the public, MTV is famously opaque about the selection rules behind the nominee pool that the audience gets to vote on.
There is very little public information about how the nominees are selected (reps for MTV owner Paramount declined to comment on the selection procedure), unlike the Grammy Awards, where labels and Recording Academy members formally submit artists to specific categories.
This development once again raises a question the category's existence has been circling since its introduction in 2019: what does MTV think K-pop is?
The category was introduced at the 2019 VMAs and immediately drew criticism from K-pop fans who felt it segregated their artists from major categories like Video of the Year and Artist of the Year. BTS fans started up a #VMAsRacist hashtag, which, seven years later, seems rather similar to the furore over another major awards ceremony (more on that later).
KATSEYE has actually been nominated for a VMA before; their debut song “Touch” won a moon man in 2025 for ‘Push Performance of the Year’. This made sense, because they are extremely talented, and none of the words in the category name were ‘Korean’ or ‘pop’.
In the years since 2019, the category has nominated and awarded acts whose relationship to Korean music has become increasingly tangential. BTS won with "Butter" in 2021. The song was sung entirely in English, though all members are Korean.
The next year, BLACKPINK’s Lisa won with "Lalisa" (a Korean-English mix) and again in 2024 with "Rockstar" (fully English) — both tracks from a Thai artist who is a member of a Korean group. In 2025, her collaboration "Born Again" with Doja Cat and Raye won the category despite being completely in English and featuring two artists with no connection to the Korean music industry.
Lisa is nominated again this year for “Dream”, another 100 percent English track.
KATSEYE’s 2026 nomination continues that trajectory, only slightly further along the line, because as has been made clear before, KATSEYE is a global group , not a K-pop group, so their connection to South Korea hangs mainly by the single thread that is Yoonchae.
The Recording Academy announced in June that a new Best Asian Pop Music Performance category will be awarded at the 2027 Grammys. The category requires "meaningful use of one or more Asian languages" as an eligibility condition. Under that definition, KATSEYE would not be eligible since their music does not feature Korean or any other Asian language.
After the category was announced, widely-assumed frontrunner BTS declared they were not submitting to the Grammys this year at all. The resulting uproar poured propane onto an existing fire, one that even reportedly led to the Recording Academy CEO reconsidering the category as a whole.
KATSEYE’s nomination is the latest straw on the camel’s back for Western awards shows, which must, at least belatedly, look beyond tokenistic fan placations to actually decide what K-pop means as a category. And then stick to it.
18 August 2026: This article about the MTV VMA nominations has been updated to include that Paramount reps declined to comment.
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