Tate McRae’s 2025 VMA medley has been nominated for outstanding choreography for variety or reality programming at the 2026 Emmy Awards, putting Robbie Blue’s work in a category that almost never notices a music awards show performance. The nominations were unveiled on July 8.
The medley paired “Sports Car” and “Revolving Door,” and Blue built it around more than the sand pit sections that drew the eye on the night. The recognition matters because it pushes McRae’s performance into a tiny slice of awards history: only one other VMA performance has ever been recognized at the Emmys, and that was Michael Jackson’s 1995 medley, which earned a Primetime Emmy nomination in 1996 in the same category.
For Blue, the nomination was immediate validation. He posted, “This is unreal!!!” and added a thank-you to his team, the cast, the creative department and everyone who made it happen. The category also puts McRae’s performance alongside Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl Halftime Show performance, Wicked: One Wonderful Night, the 2026 Oscars and RuPaul’s Drag Race, a field that shows just how unusual it is for a VMA routine to break through at the Emmys.
What likely separated the performance from a standard concert medley was the way the choreography treated the sand pit as part of the movement, not just a setting. Acrobatic sections inside that space would have forced the dancers to use balance, leverage and timing differently from a floor routine, making the visual language of the piece as much about physical risk as about the songs themselves. That is the kind of detail Emmy voters have traditionally rewarded when they decide choreography is doing more than staging a performance.
The nomination arrives during a busy stretch for McRae. Her third album, So Close to What, topped both the Billboard Canadian Albums chart and the Billboard 200, and she was the top charting Canadian artist of 2025. “Sports car” also reached No. 9 on the Billboard Canadian Hot 100 and cracked the top 15 on the Year-End Billboard Canadian Hot 100 Songs chart for 2025. McRae was also honoured with the Hitmaker Award at Billboard Women In Music 2026 in Los Angeles.
That broader run gives the Emmy nod more weight. It turns a single VMA performance into part of a larger awards season for McRae, with the next verdict now resting with the 2026 Emmy Awards. If the category voters respond to the choreography the way the nomination suggests, the medley could become the rare VMA performance that moved from pop spectacle to television history.
