The nominations were just announced for this year’s VMAs, but the Video Vanguard recipient remains a mystery. Here’s who we think would be the most logical picks.
Ed Sheeran, winner of Artist of the Year, poses in the press room during the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards at The Forum on August 27, 2017 in Inglewood, California.
Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Image
On Tuesday (Aug. 5), MTV announced the nominees for the 42nd annual Video Music Awards. Lady Gaga led nominations with 12, while her “Die With a Smile” collaborator Bruno Mars was just behind her with 11, with big names like Kendrick Lamar and Sabrina Carpenter trailing shortly behind that pair. While we now know the nominees for marquee categories like video and artist of the year, one award remains remains a mystery for the Sept. 7 VMAs: The Michael Jackson Video Vanguard award.
The lifetime achievement award, which dates back to the first-ever VMAs in 1984 and has been given out annually since (with occasional gaps, most recently for the pandemic-stricken first two years of the 2020s), is given to reward “outstanding contributions” and “profound impact” on music videos and popular culture. It’s named after Michael Jackson, arguably the most outstanding artist in music video history, and has been handed out over the decades to video luminaries ranging from David Bowie and The Rolling Stones to Beyoncé and Missy Elliott. Most recently, the Video Vanguard has been awarded to global pop superstars Shakira (2023) and Katy Perry (2024).
Who will be the 2025 recipient? As we did last year — correctly predicting Perry as the ’24 honoree — Billboard decided to take a crack at predicting who will get the award this year. We started with some of the biggest and most legendary artists yet to receive the award, and filtered our list through factors like contemporary relevance, promotional considerations and the simple likelihood of the artist being willing to show up to deliver a speech and career-spanning medley performance, as has been customary of honorees for most of the past decade.
Here are our eight best guesses for the 2025 Video Vanguard recipient, ranked (roughly) from least to most likely.
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Lady Gaga
Could Gaga cap what might be an already-triumphant night for her with a Video Vanguard win and accompanying career-spanning performance? It’s certainly a possibility — and few artists would be as deserving, with Gaga’s illustrious career as a music video icon spanning 17 years and encompassing countless classic VMAs moments. But one of those moments came just five years ago with her acceptance of the “Tricon” award and her accompanying hits medley, which still might be a too-close, too-soon overlap with a prospective Video Vanguard win.
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Kesha
Kesha is coming off her biggest pop moment of the decade with her well-received, Billboard 200 top 20-charting Period album, and the current revival of her brand of what is now called “recession pop” would make the timing even righter for a career-spanning celebratory performance. But while most Video Vanguard recipients have historically had at least a decade-long run of major MTV hits to pull from, Kesha’s biggest pop impact mostly came in the first half of the 2010s — and as much as pop fans liked Period, none of its songs even reached the Billboard Hot 100.
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Drake
Drake unquestionably has the hits for a killer Video Vanguard medley, and he has the motivation — both from a legacy standpoint and from a promotional standpoint — following last year’s deflating beef with Kendrick Lamar, and this year’s upcoming Iceman release. The one thing he doesn’t really have here is much of a relationship with the VMAs: It’s unclear if he’s even showed up for any of the ceremonies since Rihanna famously curbed him as he presented her with the Video Vanguard in 2016.
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The Weeknd
It’s a little now-or-never for the artist born Abel Tesfaye, who heavily teased the retiring (or at least easing-off) of his The Weeknd persona following the release of this year’s Billboard 200-topping Hurry Up Tomorrow album. He certainly has the right hits and the right timing, and he’s historically cared about such legacy achievements — but would there be too much pressure on another high-profile career-spanning medley performance to live up to his triumphant Super Bowl halftime show from just four years earlier?
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Bruno Mars
Bruno Mars’ career has been so stacked with hits that not only has he already performed at Super Bowl halftime twice, his most recent appearance was nine years and eight Hot 100 top 10 hits ago. Two of those, “Die With a Smile” with Lady Gaga and “APT.” with ROSÉ, were in the past year, thus making this a golden moment for Mars to celebrate his decade and a half of top-level hitmaking. The only question is if he still has anything to promote: He hasn’t released an album since An Evening With Silk Sonic alongside Anderson .Paak four years ago, and even with the two smashes this year (and a third top 20 hit in Sexyy Red collab “Fat, Juicy & Wet”), there’s no indication of a larger project on the way.
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Mariah Carey
Has Mariah Carey really never won the Video Vanguard award? Forget that: Mariah Carey has still never won a single Video Music Award, getting shut out to date in eight career nominations stretching back to 1996. She’s up for a ninth in September, with “Type Dangerous” nominated for best R&B video, but MTV could really make this wrong right by giving Mimi the Video Vanguard for her decades-spanning career as a music video superstar. She’d be on the veteran side for the award at this point, but that didn’t stop MTV from honoring Shakira two years ago, so perhaps there’s still a chance for MC after all — and given the release of new album Here It for All later this September, now would be the time.
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Ed Sheeran
After a couple more intimate and introspective releases, Ed Sheeran has been jumping back into Big Pop with the singles off his upcoming album Play — one of which, “Sapphire,” is up for three awards, including best pop and song of the year — at September’s awards. Sheeran, a music video and VMAs fixture since the early ’10 (as well as a record-setting live performer) seems a perfect candidate for a career-spanning celebration on the MTV stage — particularly because Play is dropping just five days later.
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Miley Cyrus
Miley Cyrus is a true legend of the VMAs: a former host, video of the year winner and central figure in one of its all-time most infamous performances, all within just a three-year period in the mid-2010s. She’s also a four-time nominee this year, and while her Something Beautiful visual album (up for best long form video) has been out for months at this point, it came with a somewhat muddled rollout and was met with a muted commercial response — meaning Cyrus might feel motivated to redeem its era with a massive spotlight performance on a stage she’s very familiar with. We have our fingers crossed, anyway.
