With BTS formally withdrawing from consideration at the 69th Grammy Awards, the inaugural Best Asian Pop Music Performance category will be handed to another act when nominees are announced in mid-November, opening the door for a group other than the genre’s biggest global name to claim the award’s first-ever winner status.

BTS’s seven members announced their decision on July 29, saying through Korean-language Instagram statements that they hoped their music could be “heard and loved for what it is, rather than being divided by region or language.” The withdrawal followed the Recording Academy’s June 16 announcement of five new Grammy categories, including Best Asian Pop Music Performance, which the Academy’s rulebook describes as recognizing “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, with meaningful use of one or more Asian languages.”

A Category BTS Could Have Dominated

Given BTS’s commercial dominance, industry watchers have widely noted that the group would have entered as the overwhelming favorite had it chosen to compete. The band’s new album, “Arirang,” released after all seven members completed South Korea’s mandatory military service, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and topped Apple Music charts in 115 countries and regions upon its March release. With BTS out of the running, that clearer path to becoming the category’s first-ever winner now opens up for a smaller group of contenders.

The Leading Contenders

Industry observers have pointed to several acts as the strongest candidates to claim the inaugural award. Among K-pop groups, ATEEZ, Stray Kids, Hearts2Hearts and the newer boy group CORTIS have been named repeatedly as likely nominees, given their commercial performance and continued willingness to submit music for Grammy consideration despite the surrounding controversy. Filipino girl group BINI, who made their live festival debut at Coachella earlier this year, has also been cited as a strong contender, reflecting the category’s stated intent to recognize Asian pop acts beyond Korea’s borders specifically.

Beyond K-pop, Japanese singer-songwriter Kenshi Yonezu has been named among the category’s strongest potential nominees, illustrating a notable tension within the award itself. As The Conversation noted in an analysis of the controversy, Yonezu has little connection to the idol-group production model most closely associated with K-pop, meaning the category’s eventual winner could highlight just how broad and varied the term “Asian pop” actually covers, spanning everything from tightly choreographed idol groups to solo singer-songwriters working in an entirely different tradition. The same analysis noted that Chinese pop, or C-pop, similarly spans multiple distinct regional and linguistic subgenres that the category’s current wording does little to differentiate.

Why So Few Other Artists Have Joined the Boycott

Despite widespread public commentary supporting BTS’s decision, remarkably few other prominent K-pop acts have followed the group in withdrawing their own music from Grammy consideration. Industry analysts attribute that reluctance to BTS’s unique commercial standing within the music business. Unlike newer or less established acts, BTS can afford to forgo Grammy recognition entirely without meaningfully affecting its global commercial position, a luxury not every group competing for the new category currently shares. HYBE, BTS’s label, has explicitly clarified that the withdrawal does not represent a company-wide boycott, with a source telling reporters that other artists under the label will proceed with Grammy submissions if they choose to do so.

Limited Public Solidarity, Mostly Symbolic

Public support for BTS’s stance has come primarily from figures adjacent to the K-pop industry rather than from direct competitors likely to benefit from the group’s absence. Tablo, frontman of the Korean hip-hop group Epik High, shared a story from BTS leader RM’s Instagram with the message “ARIRANG > Grammys.” Bang Yong-guk of the K-pop group B.A.P and Korean American actor Daniel Dae Kim similarly shared news coverage of the boycott to their own followers. None of these gestures, however, have translated into other major K-pop acts actually pulling their own music from the new category.

A Familiar Pattern Across Award Shows

The controversy surrounding BTS’s absence echoes a broader pattern that has played out across other major U.S. award shows in recent years. MTV’s Video Music Awards introduced a Best K-pop category in 2019, the American Music Awards added a Favorite K-pop Artist award in 2022, and the Billboard Music Awards introduced four K-pop-related categories in 2023. Some commentators have drawn a comparison to the Grammys’ own history, pointing specifically to the ceremony’s 1989 decision to introduce a Hard Rock/Metal category, an addition remembered for one of the Grammys’ more notable missteps when voters awarded the inaugural prize to the progressive rock band Jethro Tull rather than a genre-defining act like Metallica or AC/DC, illustrating how a new category doesn’t always deliver the recognition its creators intended.

The Recording Academy’s Position

Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. has defended the new category directly, saying it “was created to celebrate the depth, diversity and extraordinary growth of pop artistry coming out of Asia,” and adding that “more categories mean more artists’ work is recognized.” Mason has separately stressed that submitting music in a genre category does not exclude an artist from also being considered in the Grammys’ general field, which includes Album of the Year, Record of the Year and Song of the Year.

With eligibility for Best Asian Pop Music Performance running through Aug. 28 and nominees expected to be announced in mid-November, ahead of the ceremony’s Feb. 7, 2027 broadcast, the coming weeks will determine which acts formally enter the running for the category’s first-ever trophy. Whichever group or artist ultimately wins, industry observers say the moment is likely to carry outsized symbolic weight, marking not just the start of a new Grammy category but also a test case for whether recognition through a genre-specific award can coexist with, rather than substitute for, broader inclusion in the ceremony’s most prestigious general-field honors that BTS itself has spent years pursuing without success.