LISA Cries Happy Tears After Making VMAs History With Best Pop Win for “Dream”

The 2026 MTV Video Music Awards had barely started when LISA made history. The first award of the night — Best Pop — went to the BLACKPINK star for her song “Dream,” and by the time she reached the microphone, she was already fighting back tears.

It wasn’t just any trophy. With this win, LISA became the first K-pop solo artist ever to take home Best Pop, and the first female K-pop artist to do it. BTS won the category back in 2020, but as a group. No solo act from Asia had ever pulled it off. Until Sunday night at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, when Teyana Taylor read out the name that sent the arena — and half the internet — into a frenzy.

She walked onto the stage in her all-red carpet look, Moonman in hand, clearly stunned. This was her fourth solo VMA, after wins in 2022, 2024, and 2025, but the emotion on her face suggested this one hit different. And honestly? You could see why.

An Emotional Acceptance Speech

LISA opened her speech the way only she could — in Thai. “Sawatdee kha, everyone! First of all, thank you MTV for this amazing award,” she began, and from there it only got more heartfelt.

She thanked everyone who helped bring “Dream” to life, calling the track’s late-night recording sessions the thing that carried her to that stage. “All those late night dreams brought me here today, so thank you for the inspiration,” she said, a line that landed pretty perfectly given the song’s title.

Then came the part that really got the crowd going. She turned to her fans — the Lilies — and you could hear her voice catch. “Thank you to my Lilies, I wouldn’t be here without you guys. Thank you so much for your love and support.”

It was short, sincere, and refreshingly unscripted-feeling. No laundry list of managers and label execs. Just gratitude, in two languages, from someone who clearly didn’t expect to be this moved. The cameras caught her blinking away tears as she held the trophy up, and within minutes the clip was all over social media.

The Best Pop Race She Won

Let’s be honest — this was not a soft category. LISA beat out a murderers’ row of pop’s heaviest hitters: Taylor Swift’s “The Fate of Ophelia,” Ariana Grande’s “hate that i made you love me,” Sabrina Carpenter’s “House Tour,” Olivia Rodrigo’s “drop dead,” Charli xcx’s “SS26,” and Tate McRae’s “Nobody’s Girl.”

That’s three of the most-nominated artists of the entire night — Swift, Grande, and Carpenter came into the show with 11, 8, and 9 nominations respectively — and LISA took the category over all of them. For a solo K-pop act, winning a mainstream pop category against that lineup is the kind of thing that genuinely moves the needle. It’s not a genre ghetto or a special-interest award. It’s Best Pop. Full stop.

“Dream” — released through her own LLOUD company in partnership with RCA Records — features Japanese actor Kentaro Sakaguchi, an unexpected collaboration that gave the track a cross-cultural texture nobody quite saw coming. The video earned LISA four nominations on the night: Best Pop, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, and Best K-Pop. She converted the biggest one.

A Performance to Match the Trophy

Winning wasn’t enough for LISA. Later in the night, she took the stage again — this time to perform her brand-new single “SaWaDiKa,” the lead single from her upcoming PRESS PLAY EP.

The title is a stylized take on the Thai greeting “Sawatdee Kha” — the female form of “hello” in her native language — and it’s about as on-brand as a song title gets. The performance was all high energy, sharp choreography, and a third outfit change of the night. If the win was the emotional high point, the performance was the victory lap.

She’d already turned heads before the show even started. Her red carpet look was pure commitment: a sheer, corseted red column dress by The Attico, layered under a voluminous faux-fur coat by Quine Li that pooled into a sweeping train behind her. Red pumps. A red accent wrapped around her high ponytail. Bangs, obviously. It split opinion online — those looks always do — but nobody could accuse her of playing it safe.

A Solo Career That Keeps Getting Bigger

For anyone who’s been following the arc, this moment has been building for years. LISA — born Lalisa Manobal in Thailand — moved to South Korea as a teenager, trained under YG Entertainment, and debuted in 2018 as the main dancer and rapper of BLACKPINK, a group that went on to become the biggest girl group on the planet.

But the solo chapter is where things really accelerated. Her 2021 solo debut single album Lalisa made her the first female K-pop soloist to win a VMA when she took Best K-Pop in 2022. She added to that collection with Best K-Pop wins in 2024 (“Rockstar”) and 2025 (“New Woman”). Then she changed the game entirely: in 2024 she founded her own management company, LLOUD, and signed a deal with RCA Records, giving her ownership of her career in a way few K-pop idols ever achieve.

Since then it’s been one leap after another. Her debut solo album Alter Ego dropped in 2025. She made her acting debut as Mook in season three of HBO’s The White Lotus. Her documentary Always Lalisa premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival just days before the VMAs. A sold-out fan tour here, a fashion house ambassadorship there. The Best Pop win is the latest — and loudest — proof that the solo era isn’t a side project. It’s the main event.

K-Pop’s Night, Full Stop

Zoom out, and the 2026 VMAs look like a genuine landmark for Korean pop. BTS — back together and clearly not missing a step — won three trophies: Song of the Year for “Swim,” Best Group, and Best K-Pop, where they beat out “Dream” itself. “Swim,” the title track from their fifth studio album ARIRANG, gave them their first-ever Song of the Year win after coming up short with “Dynamite” back in 2021.

It also continued a streak that started last year, when BLACKPINK’s Rosé became the first K-pop artist to win Song of the Year with “APT.,” her Bruno Mars collaboration. Two years running, the night’s biggest prize has gone to K-pop. That’s not a niche anymore. That’s the center of the pop universe.

The show itself, hosted by Snoop Dogg and airing live on CBS from coast to coast, was stacked: Madonna took Artist of the Year after arriving with a leading 13 nominations, Taylor Swift closed the night with Video of the Year for “The Fate of Ophelia” plus the inaugural Artist Director Honors, and a George Michael tribute closed out by Adam Lambert gave the night its emotional anchor.

But the image that will stick — the one already doing laps on every feed — is LISA in red, holding that Moonman, trying not to cry and failing. First K-pop soloist to win Best Pop. Four solo VMAs and counting. A new single out, an EP on the way, and a fanbase that showed up exactly when it mattered.

All those late-night dreams, indeed. They brought her here — and if Sunday night was any indication, she’s nowhere near done.

Source: Just Jared