MAMA Awards in Osaka: Fan Festa, New Award Split and Collaborations

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The MAMA Awards go beyond the classic ceremony this year, with a fan festival in Osaka and stages featuring art, film and animation. Here's an overview of the dates, venues, categories and lineup. ━━━━━━━━━━ 🙋 New: the MAMA Fan Festa The MAMA Awards are one of K-pop's biggest year-end events. According to the organizers, this year they are stepping outside the traditional format of an in-venue ceremony and launching a fan festival across the host city, Osaka. The MAMA Fan Festa starts this year. It is meant to strengthen the touchpoints with fans worldwide, online and offline. Park Chan-uk, head of the live entertainment business section, described it as a festival where fans can enjoy themselves even more through various quest experiences. According to Park, fans are not meant to simply watch the ceremony, but to take part, share what they like, and build new relationships with fans they meet for the first time. 👉 For you: According to the report, the Fan Festa also runs online via Mnet Plus. The report doesn't say which program items are available online. ━━━━━━━━━━ 📅 Dates and venues The Fan Festa runs from Nov. 9 to 21. It takes place at various locations in Osaka, including Kyocera Dome Osaka, Midosuji Street and Namba Square, as well as online via Mnet Plus. The awards ceremony itself is on Nov. 20 and 21 at Kyocera Dome Osaka in Japan. The concept is "A Music Interstellar." Yoon Shin-hye, head of Mnet, explained the theme this way: audiences freely swim between stars in a "music interstellar" that transcends time, space, imagination and reality. 👉 For you: The show takes place in Osaka, not in Korea. The report says nothing about tickets or broadcast. For that, check the official channels of the MAMA Awards and Mnet. ━━━━━━━━━━ 🏆 New split of the awards Previously, the fan-voted categories and the main prize categories were separated across the two days. This year, the awards will instead be divided into artist and performance categories. The first day will present Fans' Choice and the singer category awards. The second day will feature the Best Song Top 10 and the genre-specific awards. ━━━━━━━━━━ 🎤 Lineup and collaborations Performers include BIGBANG, Cortis, Enhypen, Zerobaseone, NCT Wish, Treasure, Ive, Le Sserafim, 2NE1's CL, TWICE's Nayeon, Babymonster, Rescene, Allday Project, Illit and Hearts2Hearts. The veteran duo Panic will also stage a collaboration performance with Cortis' Martin and Seonghyeon, Woodz, Zerobaseone's Kim Tae-rae, Allday Project's Woochan and Hearts2Hearts' Yuha. There will also be a collaboration between K-pop and South Korean contemporary art master Lee Bae. Yoon said it visually expresses the message that art and music take on new meaning within the cycle of time. Enhypen will appear in a cinematic stage with the film "Dune: Part Three," which is slated for release in December, according to the report. BIGBANG will present an unexpected collaboration stage together with the popular Korean animated TV series "Dooly the Little Dinosaur." ━━━━━━━━━━ 🎙️ Park Bo-gum and the 27th year Actor Park Bo-gum returns as host and is also the first-ever ambassador for the MAMA Awards. According to Yoon, he will serve as a storyteller and a guide through the music universe. He has accompanied the show through many milestone years. Harry H.K. Shin, head of the music entertainment division, said the show has always focused on creating iconic K-pop moments rather than simply getting bigger. The event is in its 27th year. They want to approach it with the mindset of a rookie taking part for the first time. ━━━━━━━━━━ 🔗 Sources Yonhap Culture – MAMA Awards to expand beyond stage with fan festival, cross-genre collaborations https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20261029007400315 ━━━━━━━━━━ 💬 Do you follow the MAMA Awards every year? Which stage or collaboration do you absolutely not want to miss this time? 📍 More from: CJ ENM: https://www.instagram.com/cjenm.official/ 📲 On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lebeninkorea_en/ 📸 Photos: Marek Piwnicki, Marissa Lewis (Unsplash); K-POPIT 케이팝잇 (CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons), https://www.youtube.com/@_TV10 (CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons), Korea.net / Korean Culture and Information Service (CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons), 티비텐 (CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)