Every member of BTS posted the same short statement to Instagram on July 29, confirming the group would not enter its comeback era into contention at next year's Awards — a prize the septet has been nominated for five times since 2021 but has never actually won. The refusal lands roughly six weeks after the Recording Academy rolled out a slate of new competition fields, including one built specifically for Asian-language pop, and it's that new category the band is pointing to as the reason they're stepping back.
A Prize That Looked Built With Them in Mind
In mid-June, the Academy confirmed five additions to the lineup for next year's ceremony: Best Asian Pop Music Performance, Best R&B Collaboration or Duo/Group Performance, Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance, Best Traditional Folk Album, and Best Latin Song. Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. framed the overhaul as evidence the changes his members approved "speak to the breadth of today's music industry."
The Asian pop award was pitched as a way to spotlight K-pop, J-pop, and C-pop under one roof, with the Academy describing the genre as one of the most important and enduring forces in the global music industry. But the eligibility rules attached a catch that mattered enormously for BTS specifically: entries have to make meaningful use of an Asian language, and tracks performed entirely in English are shut out.
Why Their Own Comeback Doesn't Fit the Box Made for It
That rule collides directly with BTS's tenth studio album, ARIRANG, released in March and built around the lead single "Swim." Both "Swim" and its follow-up, "Normal," were recorded entirely in English, meaning the two songs most likely to have carried the group's Grammy campaign wouldn't have cleared the bar for the category built to include them. A separate Korean-language version of "Normal" does exist and has been floated by awards trackers as a possible entry — an option BTS apparently chose not to pursue.
One Message, Seven Accounts
RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V, and Jungkook each posted an identical note to their individual Instagram Stories. The group said it hopes its "music can be heard and loved for what it is," rather than sorted by where it comes from or what language it's sung in, and thanked its fanbase, known as ARMY.
That framing echoed a complaint fans had already been making since the category leaked in June — that carving out a separate lane for Asian artists risks pulling them out of the Grammys' marquee races rather than folding them in. BTS's label, HYBE, added its own gloss on the decision, telling reporters "this is not a company-wide boycott" — other acts on the roster remain free to submit their own music if they choose.
Five Tries, No Trophy
The withdrawal stings a little more given the band's track record with the show. BTS has picked up five nominations across three ceremonies without ever winning: "Dynamite" lost Best Pop Duo/Group Performance in 2021, "Butter" lost the same category in 2022, and 2023 brought a trio of nods — Best Pop Duo/Group Performance for "My Universe" with Coldplay, Best Music Video for "Yet to Come," and an Album of the Year credit as featured artists on Coldplay's Music of the Spheres — none of which converted into a win. The group has taken the Grammy stage three separate times, in 2020 (joining Lil Nas X as a guest act), 2021, and 2022, without ever collecting the award itself.
The sting isn't new to the members. Back in 2020, Suga told Variety that lifting a Grammy was simply "a dream anyone working in music has." After the 2022 loss, RM addressed a Las Vegas concert crowd directly, telling fans the group showed up for them, not for hardware, and brushing off the disappointment in the moment.
A Familiar Move, Just Not for BTS
BTS now joins a running list of acts who've sat out the Grammys over how the ceremony sorts or judges music, a list that reportedly includes The Weeknd, Frank Ocean, Will Smith, and Morgan Wallen, according to the BBC's reporting. Drake made a similar case back in 2020, telling Instagram followers the show had become disconnected from the artists actually shaping the culture.
The timing matters because K-pop's Grammy profile has never been higher. Blackpink's Rosé picked up three nominations this past ceremony for her Bruno Mars duet "APT," and the soundtrack hit "Golden," from the animated film KPop Demon Hunters, became the first K-pop recording to win a Grammy when it took Best Song Written for Visual Media in February. Like "Swim," though, "Golden" is sung almost entirely in English and would itself have missed the cutoff for the new Asian pop category. Awards trackers had already floated Ateez, Hearts2Hearts, Bini, and Cortis as likely contenders for the inaugural prize.
Critics and Fans Aren't Reading This the Same Way
Reaction outside the fandom has leaned heavily on precedent. Some have drawn a parallel to Tyler, the Creator, who said after his 2020 Best Rap Album win that being funneled into a genre category felt more like a demotion than an honor. Others point to the opposite example: Bad Bunny's all-Spanish record won Album of the Year outright earlier this year — proof, to some observers, that a foreign-language project doesn't need its own separate lane to compete at the top.
In South Korea, pop-culture critic Kim Hern-sik framed BTS's exit as the group "dealing the Grammys a blow," arguing the band was likely to have won the new category outright and that its absence carries more symbolic weight than another nomination would have. Other commentators quoted in the same piece pushed back, arguing the Grammys were never really a survey of global music to begin with — just one country's industry rating its own output — and that the backlash says more about the ceremony's mythology than its substance.
The Academy has stayed quiet on the specific withdrawal. As of Wednesday, the Recording Academy had not issued a public response to BTS's decision, according to the BBC.
What Happens From Here
BTS remains on the road behind ARIRANG, with North American and European tour dates continuing through the summer while the group sits out the very awards cycle it had been favored to dominate. One clarification on the date: some headlines have shorthanded this as the "2026" Grammy snub, but the ceremony in question is the 69th Grammy Awards, scheduled for February 7, 2027 — the number used throughout this piece.
