2026 VMA Best K-Pop - You Vote
Six videos, one question, and it is not which fandom clicks fastest: rank these on whether they are good K-pop. Performance, choreography, what a group says about itself in three minutes, and whether any of it reaches somebody who has never learned a fanchant. Apply that and something odd falls out of the ballot: only two of these six actually dance. The other four delegate it to a crowd, hide it behind the credits, hand the screen to an actor, or skip it, which is a strange run of choices for the genre built on the point routine. So the order goes by how much weight the performance carries, not by how new or how big the act is: a rookie group finishes fifth and a stadium act finishes third. Every link is the M/V, never the performance version. Public voting closes 25 September at 6pm ET at vote.mtv.com. The order is the argument, so rank it into shape.
- 1
LE SSERAFIM (feat. j-hope of BTS) — SPAGHETTI
Wontae Ko builds the whole thing around one set piece: the giant dinner plate they dance on, with a move that acts out the line about pasta stuck in your teeth. Choreography doing the lyric's job is the hardest trick in this format and nobody else on the ballot attempts it. j-hope raps under strobes in a Matrix coat and slots into the formation rather than standing next to it. Three Korean drag performers are in the cast.
- 2
KATSEYE — PINKY UP
Blocked for six, released by five. A practice clip and a storyboard leaked in March with Manon Bannerman still in the choreography, her hiatus landed, and Bardia Zeinali's April video went out as a five-member formation instead. Then the mid-clip break with Mel 4Ever and Vivian Wilson hands the floor to a room of trans performers, which is a group saying out loud who it is for. It dances, and the dancing means something.
- 3
BLACKPINK — JUMP
Watch who is actually dancing. Dave Meyers gives the choreography away to the audience, with the crowd head-banging against walls and windows and pink lasers pouring out of their ears, while the four of them stand around in the middle of it looking unbothered. As an argument about influence, sharp. As performance, thin. It sat on top of YouTube's global daily chart for eight days running and cleared 100 million views in 15.
- 4
BTS — SWIM
Seven men crewing one ship is the picture ARMY waited years for, and Tanu Muiño shoots the members steering the ship like a reunion photograph that happens to move. Everything around it belongs to Lili Reinhart, wandering a hall of model ships with a compass. Five million views inside an hour, not one count of choreography, and the likely winner here on turnout alone.
- 5
CORTIS — REDRED
Geonho in the floral apron, working the grill at a charcoal-meat place while the others eat, sets the register immediately. The members co-directed, building the official cut on a rough version they shot themselves first, and they spend it playing air hockey and picking out thrift clothes for each other. Five hundred extras in a Goyang shopping complex, and no formation dancing until a post-credits instrumental. A routine hidden behind credits costs more than one never promised.
- 6
LISA — DREAM feat. Kentaro Sakaguchi
Defending winner here, and last year's Best K-Pop went to her and two non-Korean guests for a song with no Korean lyric in it, which a chunk of the fandom queried at the time. Her follow-up is a five-minute Ojun Kwon short film, and the black-and-white flashback where she dances is the only dancing anywhere in it. The strongest mover on this ballot, filed under acting.
