K-pop's 2026 awards calendar reached a milestone before the year was half over: at the 40th Golden Disc Awards in January, three separate grand prizes were handed out at once for the first time, splitting the spotlight between Stray Kids, G-Dragon, and Jennie.
How the 2026 K-Pop Award Season Is Structured
The 2026 K-pop awards season divides into two halves. The January–June ceremonies judged the 2025 commercial cycle (and late-2024 releases), while the late-year season in November–December — which will recognize 2026 music — was still largely unannounced as of June 26, 2026 . In practice, every settled result so far reflects 2025 releases, not the current year's music.source
Within that first half, three distinct tiers coexist, each judging by different rules:
- Commercial fan-vote shows — the Golden Disc Awards, Hanteo Music Awards, and the year-end Melon Music Awards, which weight sales, streaming, and global voting.
- Critic-panel ceremony — the Korean Music Awards, a juried event spanning 26 categories across general, genre, and special divisions .
- Mainstream Western crossover — the 68th Grammy Awards, where K-pop and K-pop-adjacent acts competed inside general categories rather than dedicated K-pop ones .
The data sources differ too. The Golden Disc Awards count albums and digital songs using the Circle Music Chart (formerly Gaon) as their official data source, covering releases from early November 2024 through end-October 2025 . The Hanteo Music Awards instead run their own global sales tracker with separate scoring weights — for example, 50% Hanteo Global score, 20% global voting, and 30% judging for its Grand Prize .
One pattern defined the January–February results: Stray Kids, G-Dragon, and Jennie each took at least one Daesang (grand prize). Stray Kids won Album of the Year at the GDA for KARMA, G-Dragon won Song of the Year, and Jennie won the newly created Artist of the Year Daesang . The sections below break down each confirmed ceremony in turn.
40th Golden Disc Awards: Full Winners List (January 10, 2026)
The 40th Golden Disc Awards took place on January 10, 2026 at 6:30 PM KST at the Taipei Dome in Taiwan, the seventh GDA staged overseas and the ceremony's 40th-anniversary edition . For the first time in its history, the GDA handed out three separate grand prizes (Daesangs) at once, splitting the top honors across an album, a song, and a newly created artist category .source
Stray Kids won Album of the Year for KARMA, their fourth studio album, which sold over 3 million first-week copies — 2025's only triple-million seller — and debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 . G-Dragon took Song of the Year for 'HOME SWEET HOME' featuring Big Bang's Taeyang and Daesung, his first solo Daesang at the GDA since Best Digital Song in 2013 . Jennie won the newly created Artist of the Year Daesang and finished with the highest individual trophy count of the night, also collecting Best Digital Song for 'like JENNIE' and another Best Digital Song as a BLACKPINK member for 'JUMP' .source
IVE extended an unbroken streak, winning Best Album and Best Digital Song for a third consecutive year across 2024, 2025, and 2026 . The table below summarizes the headline winners.
| Category | Winner(s) |
|---|---|
| Album of the Year (Daesang) | Stray Kids — KARMA |
| Song of the Year (Daesang) | G-Dragon — 'HOME SWEET HOME' |
| Artist of the Year (Daesang) | Jennie |
| Best Album | ATEEZ, ENHYPEN, SEVENTEEN, TXT, ZEROBASEONE |
| Best Digital Song | BLACKPINK, aespa, BOYNEXTDOOR |
| Best Group | MONSTA X |
Hosted by Sung Si-kyung and Moon Ga-young, the ceremony was streamed on Naver, CHZZK, PRIZM, and ABEMA and broadcast on JTBC2 and JTBC4 . The edition also debuted a redesigned golden trophy for the first time in 14 years . The expanded slate of grand prizes drew commentary from fans tracking the night, with one recap arguing the three-Daesang format reshaped how the ceremony distributed its top honors (video: THE K-POP SPY).
33rd Hanteo Music Awards: Results and Scoring Breakdown (February 15, 2026)
The 33rd Hanteo Music Awards took place on February 15, 2026 at the KSPO Dome in Seoul, hosted by Lee Chan-won and Tiffany Young, and recognized releases issued between January 1 and December 31, 2025. Built on Hanteo's real-time sales data, the ceremony handed its four grand prizes (Daesang) to ATEEZ for Best Artist, Stray Kids' Karma for Best Album, G-Dragon's 'Too Bad' for Best Song, and ENHYPEN for Best Performance.
The scoring is where Hanteo separates itself from other shows. The Grand Prize formula weighted three inputs: 50% Hanteo Global chart score, 20% global fan voting, and 30% judging panel, according to the organizer's published criteria . Standard artist categories shifted that balance to 40/30/30, special genre awards used 30/40/30, the global artist award split evenly at 50/50, and the WhosFandom award ran on 100% fan voting .
| Category | Hanteo chart | Fan voting | Judging |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grand Prize (Daesang) | 50% | 20% | 30% |
| Artist categories | 40% | 30% | 30% |
| Special genre awards | 30% | 40% | 30% |
| Global artist | 50% | 50% | — |
| WhosFandom | — | 100% | — |
The results overlap with the Golden Disc Awards held a month earlier, but not exactly. Stray Kids' Karma won the album grand prize at both shows, and G-Dragon collected a song-level Daesang at both. The difference is in which track each ceremony elevated: Hanteo's Best Song went to 'Too Bad,' while GDA's Song of the Year recognized 'HOME SWEET HOME' . That split shows how two systems can read the same artist's 2025 cycle differently — one weighting first-week album sales and chart performance, the other landing on a separate single within the same body of work.
The artist-side Daesangs also diverged from GDA. Where the Golden Disc Awards spread its top honors across Stray Kids, G-Dragon, and Jennie under a new three-Daesang format, Hanteo routed Best Artist to ATEEZ and added a performance grand prize for ENHYPEN . For fans tracking the 2025 commercial cycle, the two ceremonies together offer a fuller picture: the albums and artists that dominated sales were consistent, but the specific songs and the framing of "best" shifted with each show's scoring weights.
Seoul Music Awards, D Awards, and Korean Music Awards: Other Confirmed 2026 Shows
Beyond the sales-driven GDA and Hanteo ceremonies, three more 2026 shows had confirmed dates by late June: the 35th Seoul Music Awards on June 20 at Inspire Arena, the D Awards on February 11 at Korea University's Hwajeong Gymnasium in Seoul, and the 23rd Korean Music Awards as an online ceremony on February 26 . Each judges differently, so reading them as one ranking would be misleading.
The Seoul Music Awards, running since 1990, is one of the longest-standing ceremonies in the calendar. The 35th edition followed the show's traditional schedule — red carpet at 4 PM KST and the main ceremony at 6 PM KST — at the Inspire Arena venue . The D Awards, held earlier in the year on February 11, used the same Korea University Hwajeong Gymnasium that hosts several Seoul-based ceremonies .source
The 23rd Korean Music Awards is the outlier, and the one fans most often mistake for a popularity show. It is fully critic-driven: nominations were posted on February 5, 2026 at 14:00, and the live ceremony streamed February 26 at 20:00 through the Melon app, the Melon YouTube channel, and the Korean Music Awards YouTube channel . It spans 26 categories — 4 general, 20 genre awards across 11 genre divisions, and 2 special .source
That editorial focus shows in the winners. The 2026 general categories went to independent and non-idol acts: Chudahye Chagis' 'Sosuminjok' for Album of the Year, Lee Chan-hyuk's 'Endangered Love' for Song of the Year, Hanroro as Musician of the Year, and Woo Hee-jun as Rookie of the Year . Idol relevance was selective rather than absent — JENNIE, NMIXX, ALLDAY PROJECT, Hearts2Hearts, and LE SSERAFIM appeared among the 2026 nominees in K-pop or general fields .
"The Korean Music Awards positions itself as a critic-selected ceremony spanning 26 categories across 11 genre divisions, not a sales or fan-vote tally" — as stated on the Korean Music Awards' official 2026 page (source: Korean Music Awards).
One naming caution is worth flagging. The KM Chart Awards — abbreviated KMA like the Korean Music Awards but a separate event — was reported for July 25 at Korea University Hwajeong Gymnasium . The two share an acronym and a venue but not an organizer or judging method, so confirm any KM Chart details through that show's own official channels before treating its lineup as settled.
K-Pop at the 68th Grammy Awards: Nominations and Wins
The 68th Grammy Awards placed K-pop and K-pop-adjacent projects inside mainstream Western general categories, not a dedicated K-pop division, which the Grammys do not have. The headline placements were ROSÉ and Bruno Mars' 'APT.', nominated in both Record of the Year and Song of the Year — the highest-profile K-pop placements in the ceremony's biggest fields. These nominations show K-pop competing on the same ballot as global pop, without a genre carve-out.
Two other entries rounded out the K-pop presence. KATSEYE was nominated for Best New Artist, and 'Golden' — performed by HUNTR/X (EJAE, Audrey Nuna and REI AMI) from KPop Demon Hunters — won Best Song Written for Visual Media . That win is the clearest K-pop-adjacent trophy of the cycle, though it sits in a soundtrack category rather than a performance one, reflecting the project's film-tie-in origin.
The key structural point for fans tracking both calendars is eligibility. The 68th Grammy window covered recordings released from August 31, 2024 to August 30, 2025 , which is separate from the cycles used by Korean ceremonies. As a result, some releases that earned Korean Daesangs were never Grammy-eligible in the first place. For comparison, the 40th Golden Disc Awards counted music released from early November 2024 through end-October 2025 — an overlapping but not identical span, with a later cutoff that captures autumn 2025 titles the Grammys could not consider.source
Practically, that mismatch explains why a song can dominate Korea's early-2026 ceremonies yet be absent from the Grammy ballot, and vice versa. Reading these results together means treating each award system on its own terms:
- No K-pop category: Grammy nominees competed in general and craft fields, not a K-pop-specific division.
- Different eligibility math: the August 31, 2024–August 30, 2025 window rarely aligns cleanly with Korean cycles.
- Cross-system presence: 'APT.' nominations, KATSEYE's Best New Artist nod, and the 'Golden' win confirm K-pop's reach into mainstream Western voting .
For fans, the takeaway is that Grammy outcomes complement rather than mirror the Korean Daesang results, and the two should be compared with their separate windows in mind.
G-Dragon's 2025–2026 Awards Run: the Numbers
Across three consecutive ceremonies, G-Dragon collected a top prize at each, making him the defining soloist of the 2025–2026 commercial cycle. The run started at the 2025 Melon Music Awards on December 20, 2025 at the Gocheok Sky Dome in Seoul, where he was the night's most-awarded artist with seven trophies and a clean sweep of all three Daesangs — Song, Artist, and Album of the Year . Tickets for that show were priced at 55,000 won, and aespa finished as the next-highest with three awards .
Three weeks later, at the 40th Golden Disc Awards on January 10, 2026, he won Song of the Year for 'HOME SWEET HOME' (featuring Big Bang's Taeyang and Daesung) — his first solo Daesang at the GDA since taking Best Digital Song in 2013 for 'Crayon', a 13-year gap between individual grand prizes at the same show . Then at the 33rd Hanteo Music Awards on February 15, 2026, he picked up Best Song — but for a different track, 'Too Bad' — his third Daesang-equivalent across three consecutive shows in the same cycle .
The detail worth noting is that the two Korean shows honored G-Dragon for different songs. GDA's top digital prize went to 'HOME SWEET HOME', while Hanteo's Best Song recognized 'Too Bad' . That divergence is structural, not contradictory: GDA weights album and digital-song sales drawn from the Circle Music Chart, while Hanteo blends its global sales score with global voting and a judging panel. Two distinct voting and chart systems can reach overlapping but not identical conclusions about the same dominant artist cycle.
"The Golden Disc Awards 2026 was a mess" — fan recap of the night's wins and staging, THE K-POP SPY (video: THE K-POP SPY).
The through-line from December to February is consistency rather than a single sweep: a Melon clean sweep, a long-awaited GDA solo Daesang, and a Hanteo Best Song, each anchored to releases from the 2025 cycle .
Year-End 2026 Season: Shows and Dates Still to Be Confirmed
The commercially decisive half of the K-pop awards calendar — the November–December ceremonies — had no confirmed 2026 event pages as of June 26, 2026. At research time, only prior-cycle pages surfaced for the Melon Music Awards (MMA), Circle Chart Music Awards (formerly Gaon), MAMA, The Fact Music Awards, Asia Artist Awards (AAA), Genie Music Awards, K-World Dream Awards and the Korea Grand Music Awards (KGMA) . These shows typically finalize venues and dates in October–November, so a mid-year gap in official listings is normal rather than a cancellation signal.
The year-end broadcaster festivals were equally unscheduled. KBS Gayo Daechukje, SBS Gayo Daejeon (historically around December 25) and MBC Gayo Daejejeon (typically December 31) all remained TBA, and MAMA's 2026 details were unconfirmed in official sources .
For scale, the immediately preceding 2025 Melon Music Awards took place December 20, 2025 at the Gocheok Sky Dome in Seoul, with tickets at 55,000 won, and the night defined the G-Dragon narrative when he swept all three Daesangs as the most-awarded artist with seven trophies . The 2026 MMA edition will judge a different eligibility window — music released roughly January through October 2026 — so the late-2026 winners will reflect this year's releases, not the 2025 cycle that ran through GDA and Hanteo.
Fans tracking the late season should monitor official organizer sites and Circle Chart's own social accounts for date and venue confirmation, rather than third-party aggregators, which frequently recycle prior-year pages. Treat any November–December 2026 listing as provisional until an organizer publishes it directly .
The concrete takeaway: the 2026 awards story is half-written. The January–February ceremonies have already settled the 2025 cycle — Stray Kids, G-Dragon, Jennie and IVE among the headline names — while the year-end shows that will crown 2026's releases are still unscheduled. Bookmark organizer pages now, and expect confirmations to land in October and November.
Last updated: 2026-06-26. Year-end dates and venues were unconfirmed at publication and should be verified against official organizers as schedules are released.
Frequently asked questions
Who won the most awards at the 2026 Golden Disc Awards?
Jennie collected the highest individual trophy count at the 40th Golden Disc Awards on January 10, 2026. She won the newly created Artist of the Year Daesang, Best Digital Song for 'like JENNIE', and a second Best Digital Song as a member of BLACKPINK for 'JUMP' . By comparison, Stray Kids and G-Dragon each took a single Daesang — Album of the Year for KARMA and Song of the Year for 'HOME SWEET HOME', respectively .
What does Daesang mean at K-pop award shows?
Daesang (대상) translates as 'Grand Prize' and is the top honor at a Korean award ceremony. Most shows award up to three Daesangs — Album, Song, and Artist of the Year. The 40th Golden Disc Awards was the first in GDA history to hand out all three grand prizes simultaneously, splitting them between Stray Kids, G-Dragon, and Jennie .
When is the 2026 MAMA Awards?
As of June 2026, no official dates or venue have been confirmed for the 2026 MAMA Awards . Announcements for the late-year ceremony typically emerge in the third or fourth quarter, so check Mnet's official MAMA site and social channels for confirmed details before making travel or viewing plans.
How are winners decided at K-pop award shows?
Criteria vary by show. The Golden Disc Awards uses Circle Music Chart sales and streaming data within a defined eligibility window . The 33rd Hanteo Music Awards weighted its Grand Prize at 50% Hanteo Global chart score, 20% global fan voting, and 30% judging . The Korean Music Awards is entirely critic-panel driven with no fan vote component .
Did any K-pop acts win at the 68th Grammy Awards?
ROSÉ and Bruno Mars' 'APT.' was nominated for both Record of the Year and Song of the Year — a notable showing for K-pop in general Grammy categories — and KATSEYE was nominated for Best New Artist . 'Golden' from KPop Demon Hunters, performed by HUNTR/X, won Best Song Written for Visual Media . Verify final results at Grammy.com.
This article was written using information collected and analyzed by NAMANE's in-house K-pop research AI engine. We use AI technology to bring you faster, broader coverage, and in the process some details may occasionally differ from the latest facts. For important information such as dates, venues, and prices, please double-check with official sources.
