As a true K-pop fan I tune in every year to the Gayos (가요). These are big end-of-year K-pop blockbusters. The biggest acts of the year all come together to play their latest hits. They include elaborate stages, special remixes of their songs and crossovers between artists. Sometimes under the disguise of an 'award show'.

I always thought it would be cool to attend a gayo, as you get a whole smorgasbord of who's who of the K-pop industry. I hopefully planned my trip to possibly collide with MAMA (MNET Asian Music Awards), without knowing where it would be. So when I found out it would be held in Hong Kong this year I planned the last week of my trip around it.

But being there live was a bit different from what I've seen online. Don't get me wrong, sitting in a real arena with tens of thousands of other fans is still a spectacle. But I didn't connect with a lot of the acts on the lineup, and the whole thing felt more like a puppet show than a real 'concert'.

In this blogpost I'll tell you all about the show, and dump some more photos.

Getting the Tickets Was a Whole Ordeal

I had already booked my flight and hotel for Hong Kong before the tickets went onsale. That happened on 2025-10-20 while I was in Seoul. I didn't have the best luck and eventually had to go through a resale platform, paying a hefty premium for both days.

Let's just say the tickets arriving at my hotel front desk on 2025-11-27 felt like a small miracle.

Wang Fuk Court fire

The event happened in the aftermath of the Wang Fuk Court fire, leaving many dead and more injured and homeless. Out of respect the show had been toned down. No red carpet, no pyrotechnics and MEOVV changed the lyrics of their song BURNING UP to TURN IT UP.

The show had this weird dichotomy between lively K-pop performances and somber acceptance speeches, expressing their loss for the victims.

Because of this strong contrast, and the oft-repeated statements of sorrow, it all felt a bit disingenuous. Until Chow Yun-fat, the actor from 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' and a born and raised Hokkien legend, showed up at the very end of day 2. He asked everyone to stand up, spoke in Cantonese and was able to put into words what everyone there was feeling.

An award show?

The MNET Asian Music Awards is a two-day celebration of K-pop. It bills itself as an Asian 'Award Show' but is exclusively K-pop and felt more like a PR office. MNET, which is the MTV of Korea and hosts a lot of K-pop music on their TV channel and YouTube, is a media mogul with plenty of controversies — the most famous being that they rigged multiple seasons of their reality competition where fans could vote on their favorite trainees to debut. People went to jail for this.

With this in mind, it is not strange to note that the awards that were dished out have some stink to them. There were many vaguely named awards:

Global Trend Song — because AESPA was winning everything, and they needed something to give to IVE
Inspiring Achievement — awarded to Super Junior, mostly for showing up
Music Visionary of the Year — went to KPop Demon Hunters, because apparently that needed a trophy too
Favorite Asian Artist — went to a Japanese group, because they are the most Asian?

And then famously, they changed the 'Rookie of the Year award'. This award usually has 2 versions, a male and female version. But this year they changed it into a gender-neutral one, where you could vote for either one. This conveniently made the new act ALL DAY PROJECT eligible for the award. And would it be convenient that one of the members is the great-granddaughter of the founder of Samsung? I don't think I have to tell you who won this year .

What also didn't help with the legitimacy, was that before the awards were announced, the winner would already be seated in the normally empty artist section. So if you had a zoom camera, you could spot who was going to win. I see an arbitrage opportunity!

So I, along with pretty much everyone there, was there for the performances, not for the awards.

The Lightsticks

One of the most impressive things I saw wasn't on the stage, but in my hand. Every seat came with a free lightstick that lit up in sync with the section you were sitting in, no pairing, no app, nothing. I spent an exorbitant amount of time trying to reverse-engineer how it worked. Bluetooth? Proximity? Special firmware protocol? I eventually found the answer printed on the bag. They had pre-programmed every lightstick to a location, and then meticulously placed each lightstick at the correct seat. I initially ruled this option out, as this would have been too prone to human error, but apparently that is what they went with.

Once I figured it out I was almost more excited about that than the next performance.

The performances

If you want to watch all the performances, you can check out this YouTube playlist.

If 2 hours of K-pop is a little too much for you, then I recommend checking these out:

SUPER JUNIOR — Twenty-plus years in and they still know exactly how to work a crowd. This was the moment the whole stadium got on its feet.
AESPA — Not my favorite releases of theirs this year, but live is a completely different story. Winter picking up a guitar mid-performance was a genuinely unfair thing to do to the crowd.
BABYMONSTER - Kpop Demon Hunters — A tribute to the biggest hit of the year, performed in matching outfits and fitting hairstyles.
ZEROBASEONE — A group I was not familiar with before, but their homage to the Hong Kong film industry pulled me in!
MEOVV - TURN IT UP — For a group that debuted less than two years ago, they are a force to be reckoned with.

So, Was It Worth It?

The scale of production was unlike anything else I've been to. The coordination, crowd control and size of venue were all pretty impressive and I'm glad I can say I've experienced it live. But between the price of the tickets, the acts I didn't know, and the vanity of the awards themselves, I don't think I'd fly back specifically for it again. I'll stay home and watch all the videos online next year.

Photo Dump

This post was mostly an excuse for a photo dump anyway, so here's the rest of what I managed to capture over the two days.

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