Madonna wins Artist of the Year at the 2026 MTV VMAs

Madonna won Artist of the Year at the 2026 MTV Video Music Awards, held at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles on 27 September 2026. The singer collected seven awards over the night, including Best Collaboration with Sabrina Carpenter and Best Dance for "Confessions II - The Film." She also opened the ceremony with Sabrina Carpenter and Charli XCX, her first VMAs performance in 23 years.foxnews.com+1

The award matters because it placed Madonna, 68, at the top of a field that included Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Sabrina Carpenter, Bruno Mars and Morgan Wallen. She had entered the night as the most-nominated artist, up for 13 awards, the most of any nominee. Her previous VMAs performance came in August 2003, and she had 20 career VMA wins before this ceremony.abcnews.com

Seven awards and a return to the stage

Madonna opened the show with a medley that began with "Bring Your Love," her house-pop collaboration with Sabrina Carpenter from her album "Confessions II," before Charli XCX joined her for a remix of "Danceteria." The set also featured appearances from Seth Rogen, Sombr, Julia Garner and Debi Mazar. Garner had been linked to playing Madonna in a biopic about the singer that has since been cancelled.

The ceremony was hosted by Snoop Dogg and returned to the West Coast for the first time since 2017, at the 7,100-seat Peacock Theater, which last hosted the VMAs in 2015 when it was known as the Microsoft Theater. The broadcast, scheduled to begin at 7:30 p.m. ET on 27 September, was delayed by more than 20 minutes by an NFL game between the Baltimore Ravens and the Dallas Cowboys.

In her Artist of the Year acceptance speech, Madonna thanked her fingers "because I can always count on them." She told the audience they had not been born when she performed "Like A Virgin" at the first-ever MTV Video Music Awards in 1984. She also recounted an incident in which her shoe fell off and she dove to retrieve it, an attempt she said ended with her flashing her backside.

How the opening performance ran

Madonna said that in the last year and a half she had focused on "finding myself, believing in myself, and really making the music that I wanted to make," adding that this was her definition of being an artist. Accepting Best Dance, she said she came to New York to be a dancer and that dance is where everything happened for her, adding that dance brings everybody together.

What Madonna said accepting the award

Taylor Swift won Video of the Year for "The Fate of Ophelia," which she wrote and directed, and received the first-ever Artist Director Honors from Dakota Johnson. With 32 Moon Persons, Swift became the most-awarded artist in VMA history, breaking a tie with Beyoncé, who each had 30 as of 2024. Swift also debuted her music video for "Patient Zero," starring Johnson and Colin Farrell.

Kacey Musgraves sang Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You" in tribute to the country icon, who died on 25 August at age 80. Nirvana received the Video Vanguard Award, the first band to win it since Duran Duran in 2003. Sienna Spiro won Best New Artist and LISA took Best Pop. The VMAs aired on CBS, simulcast on MTV and streamed on Paramount+.