2025 Korea Grand Music Awards: Complete Guide to K-Pop's Fastest-Growing Award Show

The 2025 Korea Grand Music Awards takes place this Friday and Saturday at Inspire Arena in Incheon — K-pop's newest major ceremony returns for its second edition. With ATEEZ, Stray Kids, IVE, BOYNEXTDOOR, KISS OF LIFE, and FIFTY FIFTY all confirmed as attendees, this year's event is shaping up to be the most star-studded in the award show's short but rapidly growing history.

The second annual ceremony runs across two dedicated nights: November 14 (Friday) as Artist Day and November 15 (Saturday) as Music Day. Each evening is thematically distinct, which is itself a structural innovation that sets the KGMA apart from year-end award shows that compress all recognition into a single marathon broadcast. If you are planning to watch, here is everything you need to know before the red carpet rolls out.

What Is the Korea Grand Music Awards?

The KGMA is younger than most fans realize. The inaugural ceremony was held November 16-17, 2024 — making this week's event only the second edition of the award show. It was founded by Ilgan Sports, the Korean entertainment newspaper that also created the Golden Disc Awards in 1984. That institutional lineage gives the KGMA an immediate claim to credibility: Ilgan Sports does not have a track record of launching disposable promotional events, and the decision to create a new major ceremony appears to reflect a genuine belief that K-pop's global reach has outgrown the existing awards landscape's capacity to honor it fully.

The show's organizing principle is that past, present, and future artists of Korean popular music deserve a unified platform — a broader temporal scope than most ceremonies, which tend to focus narrowly on the preceding twelve months. The award categories reflect this ambition, spanning Best Artist, Grand Record, Grand Artist, Best Hip Hop, Best Vocal, Best Band, Best Dance Performance, Best Stage, Best Streaming Song, Best Adult Contemporary, and an IS Rookie Award recognizing emerging talent.

Winners are selected through a combination of expert panel evaluations, digital music and album sales data, and fan popularity voting — a hybrid methodology that attempts to balance critical recognition with commercial reality and audience engagement. The result is an award show that can simultaneously honor a veteran group's career milestone and a debut act's breakout moment, which is precisely what the KGMA's two-night format enables.

How to Watch: Broadcast and Streaming Guide

For viewers in South Korea, the KGMA broadcasts live on ENA, the cable network that has built a strong K-entertainment identity since 2022. The red carpet begins at 5:30 PM KST each evening, with the main ceremony running 6:30 PM to approximately 10:30 PM KST.

International access has been designed with K-pop's global fanbase in mind. Japan: Live streaming via Hulu Japan. Everywhere else: TikTok Live provides a global broadcast excluding Japan and China. The TikTok partnership reflects a deliberate choice to reach K-pop's most digitally active audience where they already spend their time — a contrast to the traditional broadcast-first approach that older award shows have been slow to abandon.

Fan voting through the official KGMA platform remains open until the ceremony begins. If you have not cast your votes yet, the fan popularity component affects multiple categories, and organized fandom voting campaigns from ATEEZ's ATINY, Stray Kids' STAY, BOYNEXTDOOR's BOUNTIE, and others have been active throughout the pre-ceremony period.

Who to Watch: The Confirmed Performer and Attendee Lineup

The 2025 KGMA has drawn one of the most competitive lineups of any K-pop award ceremony this year. ATEEZ and Stray Kids — two of 2025's biggest global touring acts — are both confirmed, and their presence alone guarantees the kind of high-production-value performance sequences that define memorable award show broadcasts. BOYNEXTDOOR, whose rapid commercial ascent through 2024 and 2025 has established them as one of fourth-generation K-pop's flagship acts, is also among the confirmed attendees.

The female act presence includes IVE, coming off a period of sustained chart dominance in 2025, and KISS OF LIFE, whose retro-pop approach has developed a devoted international following. FIFTY FIFTY, whose comeback trajectory following their label dispute resolution remains one of K-pop's most closely watched stories of 2025, are also confirmed. The full performer list additionally includes ALLDAY PROJECT, CRAVITY, INI, KiiiKiji, Lee Chan Won, MEOVV, Park Seo Jin, SMTR25, THE BOYZ, WOODZ, Xdinary Heroes, and xikers — a sprawl of talent across multiple generations and genres that makes the KGMA's "past, present, and future" mandate feel genuinely realized.

Artist Day vs. Music Day: What the Two-Night Split Means

The two-night structure is worth understanding before you decide which night to prioritize. Artist Day (Friday, November 14) focuses on individual performance and artistry — it is the night where recognition for stage presence, dance performance, vocal ability, and artistic identity takes center stage. Hosts Nam Ji-hyun and Irene (Red Velvet) lead the evening. For fans of performance-focused award sequences, Artist Day is typically the more viscerally exciting broadcast.

Music Day (Saturday, November 15) celebrates songs and albums — the recorded output that defined 2025's listening landscape. The emphasis shifts toward Best Streaming Song, Best Record, and the heavier institutional recognitions. Hosts Nam Ji-hyun and Natty (KISS OF LIFE) lead the second night. If you have strong opinions about which albums deserved more recognition this year, Music Day is where those arguments get adjudicated publicly.

Both nights broadcast at Inspire Arena in Incheon — a venue that opened in 2024 and has rapidly become one of K-pop's most sought-after large-capacity performance venues, combining strong acoustics with the kind of production infrastructure that major award ceremonies require.

What to Expect This Week

The KGMA 2025 arrives at a moment when K-pop's awards ecosystem is actively reconfiguring. Traditional year-end ceremonies are compressed into December, which means a November ceremony occupies an unusual position: it functions partly as a season preview, and partly as a standalone moment of recognition before the year-end rush begins. For groups releasing major projects in the October-November window — and several of this year's nominees fall squarely into that category — the KGMA represents the first significant opportunity for public institutional recognition of 2025's mid-year achievements.

Whether the 2025 KGMA will consolidate the award show's position among K-pop's major ceremonies or remain a promising second chapter in a still-establishing story is a question that this weekend will begin to answer. Based on the caliber of talent confirmed for both nights and the organizational infrastructure that Ilgan Sports has committed to the project, expectations are high. Set your alarms for 5:30 PM KST on Friday: the red carpet should be worth watching.