The MTV Video Music Awards published their categories and nominees without a Best Rock award, and Metal Injection reported on August 18 that neither a rock nor a heavy category was left on the voting site.
Best Alternative is what remains, and it is the only field on the ballot that touches rock at all. Consequence listed its nominees with the videos attached: Geese ("Taxes"), mgk & Fred Durst ("FIX UR FACE"), Noah Kahan ("The Great Divide"), Olivia Rodrigo ("the cure"), SOMBR ("Homewrecker"), Tame Impala ("Dracula") and twenty one pilots ("Drag Path").
The award being dropped had changed shape more than once. It started in 1989 as Best Heavy Metal Video, became Best Metal/Hard Rock Video from 1990 to 1995, then Best Hard Rock Video in 1996 and Best Rock Video in 1997, before being shortened to Best Rock in recent years. Metallica, Soundgarden, Korn, Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park all took it home across the 1990s and 2000s.
Rolling Stone en Espanol counted the category among the 23 original awards handed out at the first ceremony in 1989, a night when Madonna and Paula Abdul won four each and Bon Jovi and The Cure played. The award was suspended in 2007 along with 13 others, then returned the following year. The Spanish edition said MTV had issued no statement on the cut as of publication.
Consequence set the decision against Gene Simmons, who has spent years saying rock is dead, and against last year's ceremony, which gave the late Ozzy Osbourne a tribute performed by Yungblud and members of Aerosmith. Simmons has a separate argument running about his own live work, having said Kiss now needs Pophouse's permission to tour.
The genre's numbers do not obviously back the decision. Rolling Stone en Espanol pointed to rising Led Zeppelin streams, the success of the band's documentary and rock finishing 2025 as the second biggest genre in the United States. The 2026 VMAs are set for Sunday, September 27 at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, airing on MTV and CBS from 7:30pm ET.
One thing the three reports do not agree on is which ceremony this is. Metal Injection described the ballot as belonging to the 2027 Video Music Awards; Consequence and Rolling Stone en Espanol both called it the 2026 edition, and Consequence gave the September date. Metal Injection also wrote that it would be the first time in 37 years any rock or heavy category has been included, which reads as a slip for excluded.
The facts
- MTV left Best Rock off the Video Music Awards ballot.
- Best Alternative is the only rock-adjacent category remaining.
- Nominees there include Geese, Tame Impala and twenty one pilots.
- The category began in 1989 as Best Heavy Metal Video.
- It became Best Rock Video in 1997.
- Rolling Stone en Espanol counted it among the 23 original 1989 awards.
- The award was suspended in 2007 with 13 others and returned a year later.
- The 2026 ceremony is set for September 27 at the Peacock Theater, Los Angeles.
How this checks out
Confirmed
Reported by 3 independent outlets
Independent outlets reported it separately, enough to treat it as confirmed.
Cited sources 3
Every outlet that reported this, linked to what it published. Equal credits, in alphabetical order.