MTV have scrapped the ‘Best Rock’ category at their Video Music Awards after 37 years

Publish date: Monday, 24 Aug 2026, 12:09PM

Rock music has officially lost its own category at the MTV Video Music Awards, with the Best Rock Video award being scrapped after 37 years.

When MTV revealed the full list of nominees for the 2026 VMAs earlier this week, one category was noticeably missing: Best Rock Video.

The VMAs will continue to recognise genres including Pop, Dance, Hip-Hop, R&B, Latin, K-Pop and Country, but rock has been lumped in with the newly named Best Alternative category.

The nominees are:

Geese – Taxes
MGK & Fred Durst – Fix Ur Face
Noah Kahan – The Great Divide
Olivia Rodrigo – The Cure
Sombr – Homewrecker
Tame Impala – Dracula
Twenty One Pilots – Drag Path

Rock was first recognised at the VMAs in 1989, when Guns N' Roses, Aerosmith, Def Leppard and Metallica went head-to-head for the Best Heavy Metal Video award.

Guns N' Roses took home the inaugural award for ‘Sweet Child O' Mine’, beating Aerosmith's ‘Rag Doll’, Def Leppard's ‘Pour Some Sugar On Me’ and Metallica's ‘One’.

Alternative music was also recognised that year, although the genre was labelled Post-Modern. R.E.M., The Cure, The Escape Club, Love and Rockets, and Siouxsie and the Banshees competed in the category.

The rock award has gone through several name changes over the years, evolving from Best Heavy Metal Video to Best Metal/Hard Rock Video, then Best Hard Rock Video, Best Rock Video and finally Best Rock.

Last year's Best Rock category featured Coldplay, Evanescence, Green Day, Lenny Kravitz, Linkin Park and Twenty One Pilots, with Linkin Park taking home the award for ‘The Emptiness Machine’.

And it doesn't stop with the category itself. There are no rock artists nominated for Video of the Year, Artist of the Year, Song of the Year or Best New Artist at the 2026 VMAs.

So, after nearly four decades of recognising rock at the VMAs, it looks like the genre has officially been kicked out of the party.

What do you reckon, is rock dead at the VMAs, or does it deserve its own category?