Stormzy and Idris Elba pay tribute to MOBO founder Kanya King

Kanya King’s death at 57 closed a chapter that reshaped British music’s gatekeepers. Stormzy, Alesha Dixon and Idris Elba were among those paying tribute after the MOBO founder died on 3 June 2026 following a battle with colon cancer, with the MOBO Organisation saying she was surrounded by family, close friends and love.

King founded the MOBO Awards in 1996 after remortgaging her home, without institutional backing or industry support, and turned an excluded audience into an institution the mainstream could no longer ignore. MOBO says the awards were the first black awards show in Europe, and that the platform helped launch or propel artists including Emeli Sandé, Tinie Tempah, Rihanna and Amy Winehouse. It also helped force broader recognition of Black British and Black global music at a time when those artists were often shut out of major industry spaces.

Her personal story was inseparable from that mission. King grew up in Kilburn, north London, as the youngest of nine children, with a Ghanaian father and Irish mother. She later revealed a stage four colon cancer diagnosis in December 2024, but said she did not want the illness to define her. Even as her health declined, the awards and the organisation she built continued to mark her influence across music, broadcasting and live events.

The scale of that influence was underlined in 2024, when King received the LIVEtime Achievement honour at the LIVE Awards for her contribution to the live music industry over more than three decades. In February 2025, she was presented with the Paving the Way Award at the MOBO Awards in a surprise presentation by Dawn Butler MP. Those honours reflected more than personal acclaim: they recognised a founder who created a platform that widened who got seen, who got booked and who got remembered.

MOBO said the 2026 awards, in its landmark 30th anniversary year, will be dedicated entirely to King’s memory. The organisation has long described her as one of music’s most fearless champions, and its history credits the awards with helping pave the way for platforms such as MTV Base, BBC Radio 1Xtra and Channel U. King’s legacy now sits well beyond tribute: it is embedded in the institutions, genres and careers that British media once overlooked and now routinely celebrates.