The VMAs Dropped Afrobeats the Same Summer African Artists Opened the World Cup

When MTV published its 2026 Video Music Award nominations on August 18, the Best Afrobeats category was missing. No announcement. No press release. No explanation. The award that Rema and Selena Gomez inaugurated in 2023 and that Tyla won back-to-back in 2024 and 2025 had been quietly retired alongside eight other categories, including Best Rock, Best Pop, and Album of the Year.

The timing carries its own kind of irony. This is the same summer that Rema performed at the FIFA World Cup opening ceremony at SoFi Stadium, that Burna Boy and Shakira released the official World Cup anthem, and that Ayra Starr dropped her third album to 21 million first-week Spotify streams. Afrobeats has never been more visible on the global stage. And the VMAs responded by erasing its dedicated recognition.

What happened to the Best Afrobeats VMA?

MTV introduced the Best Afrobeats category at the 2023 VMAs, following the Grammys and American Music Awards in creating dedicated space for African music. The timing tracked with the genre's commercial explosion: Rema's "Calm Down" had spent months on the Billboard Hot 100, Burna Boy had sold out Madison Square Garden, and Afrobeats was being cited as the fastest-growing genre on Spotify.

In its three-year run, the category produced exactly two winners. Rema and Selena Gomez took the inaugural award for "Calm Down" in 2023. Tyla won in 2024 for "Water" and again in 2025 for "PUSH 2 START," becoming the only repeat winner. The category is now gone. MTV has offered no public statement about why.

Who were the nominees?

The nominee lists read like a roster of African music's most commercially successful artists. In 2023: Wizkid and Ayra Starr, Burna Boy, Davido and Musa Keys, Libianca, Fireboy DML and Asake. In 2024: Ayra Starr and Giveon, Burna Boy, Chris Brown with Davido and Lojay, Tems. In 2025: Asake and Travis Scott, Burna Boy and Travis Scott, Rema, Tems and Asake, Wizkid and Brent Faiyaz.

These are artists with billions of combined streams, arena tours, and major-label deals. The category was never a minor addition. It featured some of the most commercially relevant musicians on the planet.

What Tyla said when she won in 2024

Tyla's 2024 acceptance speech has aged into something uncomfortably prescient. "This is so special but bittersweet," she said from the VMA stage, "because I know there is a tendency to group all African artists under Afrobeats." She continued: "African music is so diverse. It's more than just Afrobeats. I come from South Africa. I represent amapiano, I represent my culture."

She closed with a line that felt optimistic at the time: "African music can be pop music too!" Two years later, the institution that gave her the platform for that statement has removed the category entirely. The question Tyla raised about flattening African musical diversity into a single label now has a darker companion: what happens when even that single label gets dropped?

How dominant is Afrobeats right now?

The numbers make the removal harder to explain. Afrobeats is the fastest-growing genre on Spotify, with 22% year-over-year listener growth in 2025, according to the platform's own data. Listenership is up 180% year-on-year. In Latin America alone, Afrobeats streams have increased over 400% since 2020.

On the world's biggest stage, the genre's presence is undeniable. Burna Boy and Shakira's "Dai Dai" became the highest-charting World Cup anthem in Billboard Hot 100 history, peaking at No. 17 and hitting No. 1 on the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. chart, according to Billboard. The music video featured Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappé, and Erling Haaland. Rema performed "Goals" alongside Lisa and Anitta at the SoFi Stadium opening ceremony on June 12, marking the first time an Afrobeats artist featured in a FIFA World Cup opening performance.

Ayra Starr's STARRGIRL, released August 14, pulled 21.3 million Spotify streams in its first week and topped charts across Nigeria, according to TooXclusive. The album features Wizkid, Rema, and Zayn Malik. Sub-Saharan Africa's recorded music revenues grew 15.2% in 2025, reaching $120 million, according to industry reports.

Tyla, meanwhile, has won the Grammy for Best African Music Performance in both 2024 and 2026. She remains the only artist to have ever won the category, according to the Recording Academy.

Why did MTV remove the category?

MTV has said nothing publicly. The nine dropped categories include some with decades of history: Best Rock had existed since 1989, according to Consequence of Sound. Best Pop, Best Group, Album of the Year, Song of the Summer, Push Performance of the Year, Video for Good, and Best Long Form Video were also eliminated. Best Dance was brought back after a seven-year absence.

Two readings are possible. The generous one: MTV is consolidating its award structure and wants African artists to compete in broader categories. Burna Boy is nominated for Best Collaboration and Best Latin for "Dai Dai" with Shakira. Tems is nominated for Best R&B with Dave for "Raindance." The less generous one: a category created to capitalize on a trend was discarded once the institutional enthusiasm faded, regardless of the genre's continued commercial growth.

The "graduation" argument has some surface logic. If Afrobeats artists can compete in mainstream categories, a dedicated space might feel redundant. But that framing ignores what the category actually did for emerging artists. Rema's 2023 win arrived alongside six other nominees who each gained visibility from the nomination alone. That kind of institutional spotlight matters for artists building audiences outside the traditional Western pop pipeline.

What the category's three-year life span tells us about institutional recognition

Creating a category is a statement. Removing it is also a statement. The VMAs introduced Best Afrobeats at the peak of a media cycle that treated African music as a discovery, as though Fela Kuti and King Sunny Ade hadn't existed, as though Wizkid and Davido hadn't been filling stadiums across Africa and Europe for years before Western media took notice. The category arrived when Afrobeats was novel enough to be celebrated. It disappeared once the novelty wore off.

This pattern has precedent. The same institutions that celebrated hip-hop in the early 2000s with dedicated award categories and televised showcases later absorbed it into general pop categories once it became commercially dominant. The difference is that hip-hop's integration into mainstream categories came after decades of sustained institutional presence. Afrobeats got three years.

Tyla's "bittersweet" speech now reads less like a moment of reflection and more like an early diagnosis. She identified the structural problem in real time: lumping African music into a single category flattened its diversity, but at least the category existed. The question for September 27, when the VMAs air from Los Angeles, is whether Burna Boy competing for Best Latin and Tems competing for Best R&B represents genuine integration or whether it represents something quieter.

The World Cup answered one question about Afrobeats' global standing. Two Nigerian artists independently secured the two most prominent music placements at the most-watched sporting event on Earth. Five billion people saw Rema and Burna Boy represent a genre that MTV just decided no longer warranted its own award. The industry will keep moving. The music is too significant to sideline. But the institutions that claim to honor it should be asked to explain their choices, especially when they choose silence.