2026 MAMA Awards: Performers, Choreography Nominees, Videos & How to Watch

Dance Mogul Magazine · World Wide Dance Events

2026 MAMA Awards: Performers, Choreography Nominees, Videos & How to Watch

Two nights in Osaka, 25 announced acts plus a cast of competing directors, five works up for Best Choreography, and a veteran choreographer who earned the opening stage by winning a directors' competition. Here is everything dancers and fans need, in one place.

November 4, 2026 · Dance Mogul Magazine · World Wide Dance Events

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Official MAMA hub on Mnet Plus → Last verified: Nov. 4, 2026 · Updated as official news breaks

The short answer: The 2026 MAMA Awards take place on Friday, November 20, and Saturday, November 21, 2026, at Kyocera Dome Osaka in Japan. The show runs in two parts, Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, with a different lineup each night. CJ ENM, which organizes the awards through its Mnet channel, is streaming both nights worldwide on Mnet Plus. In the United States, the Chapter 1 ceremony starts at 4:00 a.m. Eastern on November 20, and Chapter 2 starts at 1:00 a.m. Eastern on November 21. Five works are nominated for Best Choreography: ATEEZ's "BAD," CORTIS's "REDRED," ILLIT's "It's Me," IVE's "BANG BANG" and YENA's "Catch Catch." Winners have not been announced.

There is a second story inside this one, and it is the one Dance Mogul Magazine cares about most. MAMA is where global pop visibility meets the work most viewers never see: the performance directors, choreographers and rehearsal teams who turn a song into a stage. This year that work is front and center. The person directing the opening stage won the job on a television competition built around performance directors, and several of the nominated routines come with documented stories about who built them and how. This guide covers the show, and it credits the people behind it.

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At a Glance

2026 MAMA Awards: Dates, Venue and U.S. Show Times

The organizer's Japan schedule lists different start times for the two nights, so do not assume both shows begin at the same hour. Japan Standard Time is 14 hours ahead of U.S. Eastern and 17 hours ahead of U.S. Pacific in late November.

Times from the organizer's published Japan schedule, converted by DMM. Korea shares Japan's time zone, so KST times are the same. Schedules can change; DMM will recheck on November 19.

The Lineup

2026 MAMA Awards Performers by Chapter

These are the announced acts for each night, listed alphabetically. This is not the running order, and organizers have not said which songs each act will perform.

Special appearance, night not yet assigned: Panic, the veteran duo of Lee Juck and Kim Jin-pyo, will join a collaboration stage with CORTIS's Martin and Seonghyeon, WOODZ, ZEROBASEONE's Kim Tae-rae, ALLDAY PROJECT's Woochan and Hearts2Hearts' Yuha. DMM will place it on a specific night once the organizer does.

The Dance Award

MAMA 2026 Best Choreography Nominees

Five works are nominated for Best Choreography, announced on October 12. Eligible music had to be released between October 1, 2025, and September 30, 2026.

How the winner is chosen. According to the judging criteria published with the nominations and reported by Soompi, Best Choreography is decided by 100% jury evaluation. Fans do not vote in this category. That makes it different from the Fans' Choice awards, which are decided by votes on Mnet Plus and X.

Why DMM lists credits this way. The nomination names the artist, but the artist is not always the choreographer. K-pop routines are usually built by teams: choreographers, performance directors, assistants and, in some groups, the members themselves. DMM will not assign an individual credit until we can trace it to the original source. Where a credit is confirmed, we name it. Where it is not, we say so.

Official Video Desk

Watch the Five Nominated Routines

These are official videos from the artists' and labels' own channels, released before the ceremony. They are not footage from the 2026 MAMA Awards. Fixed-camera practice videos are especially useful for studying formations and transitions. The IVE selection is an official music video rather than a practice video; it is labeled separately below. Under each work, DMM notes what to watch for.

More Dance Categories

Best Dance Performance Nominees, All Four Categories

Best Dance Performance and Best Choreography are separate awards. Best Choreography honors the routine as a creative work. Best Dance Performance honors a song and its performance, split into male solo, female solo, male group and female group categories. All five Best Choreography works are also nominated here. A nomination in either category does not by itself tell you who created the choreography, or whether the act performs at MAMA this year.

The People Behind the Stages

Who Is Directing the 2026 MAMA Awards Opening? Meet Back Koo-young

The opening stage of this year's MAMA Awards belongs to Back Koo-young, a choreographer and performance director with roughly 24 years in K-pop. He has worked as an in-house performance director at SM Entertainment and as a director at the 1Million dance studio. According to The Korea Times and The Korea Herald, his credits include choreography for TVXQ!, BoA, Super Junior, SEVENTEEN and EXO. The chorus move of EXO's 2017 hit "Ko Ko Bop," which set off a worldwide dance challenge, is among the work credited to him.

His road to the opening stage ran through competition. In 2022 he led the 1Million crew on Mnet's Street Man Fighter, where the team was the last one eliminated before the final. Four years later he returned to the franchise for Street World Fighter: Directors' War, a show built around performance directors, the people who plan and produce whole stages rather than single routines. He was its oldest contestant. On October 20 he won the final, ahead of Kasper, BabyZoo and Bada, with a cheer performance built around the idea of a marathon. The prize included directing the 2026 MAMA Awards opening.

"I have devoted three quarters of my life to dance, so receiving a trophy now means a lot."

Back Koo-young, as quoted by The Korea Times, Oct. 28, 2026

Speaking with The Korea Herald, Back described what the competition gave him after decades of building stages for other people's vision: room to make work around his own ideas. "The show gave me an enormous sense of liberation," he said. The same interview notes that he still takes classes from younger dancers to keep up with new styles. As of late October, he told The Korea Times the opening concept was still in development, adding that building the story takes him far longer than the choreography itself.

Watch the work: Back Koo-young's winning final-stage performance, “Running Alone, but Together” (official Mnet Plus clip). This is footage from Street World Fighter: Directors' War, not the upcoming MAMA opening.

For DMM readers, this is the story worth following. A performance director is usually an off-camera credit. Here, one is being trusted with the first image millions of viewers will see. DMM will report the opening stage's full credits, including the dancers and crews involved, once they are released. Until then, no choreography is attributed to a performance nobody has seen.

ILLIT and Kim Da-hee: Training the Routine Before Teaching It

ILLIT's "It's Me" comes with one of the clearest first-hand accounts of how a nominated routine was built. In a June interview with the Korean outlet Dispatch, performance director Kim Da-hee, whose earlier ILLIT work includes "Magnetic," "Cherish" and "Not Cute Anymore," said the concept came to her on her first listen, when she freestyled to the song's fast beat. She built a dynamic routine of jumps and steps that work the legs hard, and she started with the members' bodies: warm-ups that built core and leg strength, and step sections drilled by crossing the practice room again and again.

Her most useful lesson for dancers is about timing. She told Dispatch there was no special secret. The group spent its time matching the beat with each other, practicing counts until they could move together without music, and filming rehearsals to catch small differences in angle and timing. She also worked on details such as fingertips and eye lines, and rather than dictating one expression, helped each member find her own. She closed by crediting the ILLIT performance directing team and the teams behind choreography and lessons, so DMM credits the routine to that team rather than to one person.

CORTIS: When the Performers Are Also the Choreographers

CORTIS has made creative ownership part of its identity. For "REDRED," Korean press reported that the five members, Martin, James, Juhoon, Seonghyeon and Geonho, built the first dance drafts themselves and refined them with the production team. A making-of film the group posted in April shows them adjusting a routine that already looked finished, and the members are credited as co-choreographers. They also co-directed the music video. It is a useful case study in the difference between performer, choreographer and creative partner, and in how much invisible revision goes into a dance that looks effortless.

YENA: A Dance Built for Everyone to Join

"Catch Catch" was designed to travel. At her March album press event, YENA said she hoped more than 5,000 people would take part in the dance challenge, according to Korean press reports. That was a stated goal, not a measured result. The song draws openly on second-generation K-pop; YENA named T-ara and Orange Caramel as references at the same event. As Weverse Magazine noted, she also filmed challenge videos with T-ara members Eunjung and Qri, turning an influence into a collaboration across generations. The routine's success is a reminder that choreography can be an invitation as much as a showcase.

Special Stages

Collaborations and the Street World Fighter Connection

Special collaboration stages have become one of the most anticipated parts of the MAMA Awards each year. These are the announced plans. They are not finished performances, and organizers have not released songs, credits or running times.

• Panic with a new generation: the veteran duo joins CORTIS's Martin and Seonghyeon, WOODZ, ZEROBASEONE's Kim Tae-rae, ALLDAY PROJECT's Woochan and Hearts2Hearts' Yuha.
• ENHYPEN × Dune: Part Three: a collaboration tied to the upcoming film, ahead of the group's next comeback.
• BIGBANG × Dooly the Little Dinosaur: an animation collaboration. Mnet business division head Yoon Shin-hye said it is meant to bring generations together.
• Also announced: a collaboration with contemporary artist Lee Bae, and one with Google Gemini, with no further details yet.

For dance audiences, the most direct link is the Chapter 1 appearance by the cast of Street World Fighter: Directors' War. The show, the newest branch of Mnet's Street Woman Fighter franchise, put performance directors at center stage and judged them on whole productions, not just routines. Seeing that cast on the same night that its winner's opening plays out is a rare moment when the people usually behind the stage take it over.

Watch Street World Fighter: Directors' War clips on Mnet Plus

How to Watch and Take Part

How to Watch the 2026 MAMA Awards, Fan Voting and MAMA FAN FESTA

Watching. CJ ENM says both nights will stream live worldwide on Mnet Plus. In Japan, the show is also available through Mnet Japan and Mnet Smart+. DMM has not confirmed whether the Mnet Plus stream is free or paid in each country, so check access and any login requirements before show night. Japan-only services are not available in the United States.

Fan voting. Fans' Choice is the fan-voted part of the awards, and it is separate from the dance awards above. According to the published criteria, Fans' Choice Male and Female are decided 90% by Mnet Plus votes and 10% by X votes, and Fans' Choice of the Year adds a live Mnet Plus vote during the show. Round two is under way. Reported deadlines differ between outlets, so check the current official Mnet Plus voting notice for the closing date and who can vote.

SUPER FAN and FAN FESTA. MAMA's SUPER FAN program, now in its third year, lets selected fans help choose the Fans' Choice nominees. CJ ENM says about 650,000 fans applied in 2025. That figure counts applications for last year's program; it is not a measure of viewers. New this year is MAMA FAN FESTA, a run of online and in-person fan activities from November 9 to 21 in the Osaka area and on Mnet Plus.

Results

2026 MAMA Awards Dance Winners

Winners will be announced during the ceremonies on November 20 and 21. DMM will update this table after each chapter, with the time of the update and the official source.

FAQ

2026 MAMA Awards: Frequently Asked Questions

When and where are the 2026 MAMA Awards?

The 2026 MAMA Awards take place on November 20 and 21, 2026, at Kyocera Dome Osaka in Osaka, Japan. The show is split into Chapter 1 on November 20 and Chapter 2 on November 21.

What time do the 2026 MAMA Awards start in the U.S.?

Based on the organizer's Japan schedule, the Chapter 1 ceremony starts at 4:00 a.m. Eastern (1:00 a.m. Pacific) on Friday, November 20. The Chapter 2 ceremony starts at 1:00 a.m. Eastern on Saturday, November 21, which is 10:00 p.m. Pacific on Friday, November 20.

Where can I watch the 2026 MAMA Awards?

CJ ENM is streaming both nights live worldwide on Mnet Plus. In Japan, Mnet Japan and Mnet Smart+ also carry the show. Access and cost can differ by country, so check Mnet Plus before show night.

Who is nominated for Best Choreography at the 2026 MAMA Awards?

The five nominees are ATEEZ, "BAD"; CORTIS, "REDRED"; ILLIT, "It's Me"; IVE, "BANG BANG"; and YENA, "Catch Catch."

Can fans vote for Best Choreography?

No. According to the published criteria reported by Soompi, Best Choreography is decided by 100% jury evaluation. Fan voting applies to the separate Fans' Choice categories on Mnet Plus and X.

Who is directing the 2026 MAMA Awards opening?

Choreographer and performance director Back Koo-young, who won Mnet's Street World Fighter: Directors' War on October 20, 2026. Directing the MAMA opening stage was part of the prize.