Las Vegas got a Memorial Day AMAs show built for live energy and fan voting, and BTS delivered the night’s biggest prize. After a pretaped opening, the group finally hit the American Music Awards stage midway through the 2026 ceremony at MGM Grand Garden Arena on Monday, May 25, then left with artist of the year and two other AMAs.
The performance made the wait feel like part of the payoff. BTS was the evening’s center of gravity, but Sombr was the surprise winner with three AMAs, while Queen Latifah kept the broadcast moving as host through a lineup that mixed new hits, nostalgia and a salute to service members and veterans.
The 2026 American Music Awards are described as the largest fan-voted awards show, and this year’s ceremony leaned hard into that identity. The show partnered with 11 military and veterans’ services organizations and included tributes to active-duty service members and veterans, a reminder that the holiday setting was not just a backdrop. In that setting, each performance and award carried a little more weight than usual, from the competitive wins to the evening’s honor roll.
Keith Urban was among the artists who used the stage to look backward and forward at once. He performed a cover of Seals and Crofts’ 1972 single “Summer Breeze,” a song that also appears on his 2026 album Flow State. Twenty One Pilots performed “Drag Path,” and New Kids on the Block took on “The Right Stuff” as part of a night that mixed current chart names with acts whose catalogs still bring a crowd to its feet. New Kids on the Block are also set to begin a Las Vegas residency on June 19 at Dolby Live at Park MGM, adding another layer to the city’s live-music calendar.
Billy Idol was another focal point. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award and then performed two of his biggest Billboard Hot 100 hits, opening with “Eyes Without a Face.” The AMAs also gave him a prime example of why these televised tributes still work when they are tied to the music itself: the award honored the career, and the set reminded viewers why that career lasted.
For BTS, the night answered the question that had hung over the first half of the broadcast after the pretaped opener. The group did not just show up; it owned the stage when it finally arrived and turned that delayed entrance into a headline-making victory. With artist of the year in hand and two more AMAs on top of it, the group left Las Vegas as the ceremony’s defining winner, even in a year when the ballots clearly spread the love around.
