BTS say they will not submit their music to the Grammy Awards

U.S. newsK-pop group BTS say they will not submit their music to the Grammy Awards“I hope that music can be heard and loved for what it is, rather than being divided by region or language,” the group said in a statement. Listen to this article with a free profile00:0000:00Members of BTS, from left, Jung Kook, Jin, V, Suga, RM, Jimin and j-hope.NBC / Todd OwyoungShareAdd NBC News to GoogleJuly 29, 2026, 9:33 AM EDTBy Matt LavietesK-pop sensations BTS said on Wednesday that they will not submit their music for consideration at the 2027 Grammy Awards, citing concerns over category divisions.The group of seven members from South Korea — RM, Jimin, V, Suga, Jungkook, Jin and J-Hope — uploaded the same statement to their individual Instagram accounts. “We have decided not to enter the Grammys this year,” a translation of the message read. “I hope that music can be heard and loved for what it is, rather than being divided by region or language.”The Recording Academy did not immediately return a request for comment.The hugely popular BTS group were widely expected to be nominated for some of the Recording Academy’s top awards at the 69th Grammy Awards — including album of the year. The boyband’s most recent album “Arirang” has been one of the best-selling records of the year. Arirang’s lead single “Swim” was a Billboard Hot 100 number-one hit in the United States. Under the new categorizations, their song “Swim” might have been excluded from competing for best Asian pop music performance at the awards, one of the five new categories the Recording Academy announced last month. The new awards were sold as an effort to boost inclusivity.While a lot of BTS’s songs are in Korean, the lead track is mostly sung in English. A rulebook for the Grammy Awards specifies that the recordings for the new award “must feature meaningful use of one or more Asian languages.”“An Asian language should play a significant role within the song in bilingual or multilingual structures such that the...