What
What the category is
Best Asian Pop Music Performance is one of five categories new to the 2027 Grammys. The Recording Academy describes it as recognising "artistic excellence in Asian pop music performances originating from or widely recognized within Asian markets, including but not limited to K-pop, J-pop and C-pop, with meaningful use of one or more Asian languages."1 Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason jr. named "J-pop and Mandopop and K-pop" when he talked about it, and said members and Trustees felt it was "the right moment" for a category that reflects the genre's scale, artistry and global impact.2
Who wins
Who gets the trophy
Awards in this category go to the performing artist or artists.1 Writers and producers of a winning track are not named in the category description. This differs from another of the five new categories, Best Latin Song, which goes to songwriters.1
Entry
Getting onto the ballot
Nothing reaches the ballot without a formal entry. Only registered media companies and Recording Academy members (Voting and Professional) can submit recordings, and they had one window to do it, July 7 to August 21, 2026. The Academy says it can receive more than 20,000 eligible entries in a single season, and its Awards staff vets each one by hand. A recording must have been released between August 31, 2025 and August 28, 2026 and stay on general sale through the final-ballot deadline. Because entry closed a week before the eligibility period ended, a release from the last week of August still had to be entered by August 21.3
Screening
Who decides which category an entry lands in
After entry, the Academy's Awards Department and genre screening committees reviewed every submission to make sure it sat in the right category. The Academy says the committees' job is not to make artistic or technical judgements but to confirm each entry is eligible and correctly placed. Submitters can add an "Artist Intent" statement explaining why they entered a work in a given category or genre, which staff and committees may take into account.34
Voting
Who votes, and how nominees are chosen
Only Recording Academy Voting Members vote, and they vote where they are peers: up to 10 categories across three genre Fields, plus the six General Field categories.4 A new option for 2027, Ballot Plus, lets Voting Members who opt in and have verified credits vote in up to 15 peer-related categories regardless of Field.1 First Round Voting ran October 12 to 22, 2026. Under the Academy's rule, the top five finalists in each category become nominees (eight in Record, Album and Song of the Year and Best New Artist), and the accounting firm Deloitte tabulates the ballots.4 The Academy's pages do not give a separate rule for this category, so the five-nominee rule is the one that applies by that wording.4
Dates
Nominations, final voting and the show
The 69th Grammy Awards nominations are announced on Monday, November 16, 2026, starting at 4:45 a.m. PT (7:45 a.m. ET, which is 9:45 p.m. KST that evening by DabPop's conversion), on Grammy.com and the Grammys YouTube channel. Final Round Voting then runs from December 10, 2026 to January 7, 2027, and the winners are revealed on February 7, 2027.45
Limits
What the Academy's pages do not say
The pages DabPop read do not say how many entries this category received, which works were entered, or how many Korean releases are among them. Nothing about the nominees is public until November 16, and this explainer will be updated with the nominee list once the Academy publishes it.5