The Grammy Awards will keep its 'Asian Pop' category for the 2027 awards cycle, Music Business Worldwide reports — even as Stray Kids join BTS in declining to submit their music for consideration.

The decision leaves the Recording Academy's newest genre slot in place for a second consecutive cycle despite the category's two most commercially obvious contenders refusing to participate.

Why does Stray Kids' refusal matter?

Stray Kids are now the second K-pop act, after BTS, to withhold their releases from Grammy submissions. That pattern matters for a category designed in part to recognize the commercial dominance of Korean pop acts in the US market.

A category without submissions from BTS or Stray Kids must rely on a thinner field of entrants to fill its five nomination slots — which changes both the competitive math and the award's credibility with the very audience it was created to court.

What does the retention change in the race?

For the 2027 Grammys, the 'Asian Pop' category survives intact. The Recording Academy has not removed or restructured it, so:

• The category remains on the awards ballot for the 2027 cycle.
• Stray Kids' catalog is absent from consideration, following BTS' earlier withdrawal.
• Other Asian pop acts competing in the field now face a nominating landscape without the two biggest K-pop brands.

The wider read

Keeping the category signals the Academy still sees a structural place for Asian pop within the Grammy framework. But the refusal of the genre's flagship acts to submit raises a practical question the Academy has yet to resolve publicly: a category can exist on the ballot, yet lack the acts that made its creation newsworthy.

Whether other major Asian pop acts submit for 2027 — and how full the category's nominee slate looks as a result — will be the next concrete test of the slot's viability.