BTS wins artist of the year at 2026 American Music Awards
BTS returned to the AMAs after four years away and left Las Vegas with Artist of the Year, Song of the Summer and a louder argument for K-pop’s reach.
BTS turned the 2026 American Music Awards into a referendum on fan power, global reach and the changing center of American pop culture, winning Artist of the Year at MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas and beating a fan-voted field that included Bad Bunny, Bruno Mars, Harry Styles, Justin Bieber, Kendrick Lamar, Lady Gaga, Morgan Wallen and Sabrina Carpenter. The group also took Song of the Summer for “SWIM” and opened the show with “Hooligan,” making its return to an awards stage feel less like a comeback than a reclaiming.
The victory carried added weight because it came in BTS’s first awards-show appearance in four years, after the group’s hiatus for mandatory military service. RM thanked ARMYs from the stage, telling the crowd, “ARMYs, we made it once again,” and credited fans around the world for staying with the group for 13 years. BTS previously won Artist of the Year at the AMAs in 2021, and Monday’s result made the group one of only four repeat winners in the category’s history.
That history matters because the AMAs have always been framed around popularity, not industry gatekeeping, and the Artist of the Year prize is fan-voted. BTS’s win showed that the group’s core constituency has not faded during its hiatus, and that its audience remains large enough to beat some of the most commercially dominant names in U.S. music. Busta Rhymes presented the award, underscoring the ceremony’s attempt to place BTS inside the broader mainstream rather than outside it.
The 52nd AMAs, hosted by Queen Latifah, aired live on CBS and Paramount+ and were tied to Memorial Day programming in Las Vegas. Latifah’s return had its own symmetry, 31 years after she first co-hosted the show in 1995. Taylor Swift, the top winner in AMAs history with 40 trophies, entered the night with eight nominations and left empty-handed, a reminder that even the most decorated American pop star could not dominate a ceremony built around fan mobilization.
Elsewhere in the show, KATSEYE won New Artist of the Year, Sombr won Best Rock/Alternative Song and Best Rock/Alternative Album, and the singing voices of HUNTR/X from KPop Demon Hunters, EJAE, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami, won Song of the Year for “Golden.” In a night that also included 12 new categories, the results pointed to a widening lane for Korean pop and its orbit inside the U.S. awards system, with BTS still setting the standard for what that influence looks like at its peak.
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