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K-pop group BTS won’t be submitting any music for the next Grammy Awards.
The seven members of the band — RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V and Jungkook — dropped a joint statement on Instagram on Wednesday to share the news.
“We hope our music can be heard and loved for what it is, rather than being divided by region or language,” the statement reads. “We thank the ARMY [BTS’s official fan club] and everyone who has always stood by us.”
The announcement comes just a month after the Recording Academy, which organizes the Grammys, announced a new category for best Asian pop music performance for this year’s Grammy cycle.
The Recording Academy’s description of the new category says it “recognizes artistic excellence in Asian pop music performances originating from or widely recognized within Asian markets, including but not limited to K-pop, J-pop and C-pop.”
It goes on to specify that nominated songs would contain “meaningful use of one or more Asian languages.”
The majority of the lyrics on BTS’s new album, Arirang, are sung in English, which could have potentially shut them out.
BTS previously snubbed
Despite five nominations — including for hits like Dynamite and Butter — and three performances at the ceremony over the years, BTS have never won a Grammy award.
All seven members are voting members of the Recording Academy and have been since 2019.
The group is in the midst of a huge comeback year.
After the group members were discharged from compulsory duty in the South Korean army, they released Arirang, their first album in years. It debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and their lead single, Swim, nabbed a No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100.
BTS can now be added to the list of artists who have publicly criticized the Grammys or decided not to submit their music to the awards in recent years, including Frank Ocean and Canadian artist The Weekend (who made amends with the Recording Academy last year).
In 2020, Canadian rapper Drake called out the academy after The Weeknd’s album After Hours got zero nominations.
“I think we should stop allowing ourselves to be shocked every year by the disconnect between impactful music and these awards and just accept that what once was the highest form of recognition may no longer matter to the artists that exist now and the ones who come after,” Drake wrote on Instagram at the time.
After years of global domination, K-pop stars could finally make it to the top of America’s biggest music awards this weekend with a record nine nominations – including four for the wildly popular KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack, Rosé for Record of the Year, and Katseye for Best New Artist.
CBC News has reached out to the Recording Academy, which has not yet issued a response to the BTS announcement. CBC News has not heard back.
In 2026, Golden from KPop Demon Hunters was the first K-pop song to ever win a Grammy. That same year, Rosé, a member of Blackpink, became the first K-pop artist to receive a nomination for record of the year. She performed at the show but didn’t win.
Having just performed at the halftime show of the FIFA World Cup, BTS are heading out on the North American run of their Arirang world tour. They’ll make a stop at Toronto’s Rogers Stadium in August.
