"Landmark for jazz history" - Fans react as BTS' Taehyung's 'Winter Ahead' earns Best Collaboration & Song of the Year nominations at 2025 MAMA Awards

BTS’ Taehyung has been nominated for the prestigious “Daesang” award for his song Winter Ahead at the 2025 MAMA Awards. A Daesang means "grand prize" in the Korean industry. The song, a collaboration between BTS's V and musician Park Hyo-shin, has also been nominated in the category “Collaboration of the Year.”

The nominees for the MAMA Awards were announced on October 16, 2025, via their social media handles. Fans are rooting for the song to win these awards, as it became the biggest jazz debut in Spotify's history upon its release in 2024.

A fan wrote on X:

"the fact that winter ahead achieved all this while taehyung was enlisted. almost half a billion streams in less than a year and on its way to a billion. it’s a masterpiece and it deserves every bit of praise and achievement. a landmark for jazz history."

Taehyung's Winter Ahead is nominated for two awards at the MAMA Awards (Image via X/thvchapters)

Fans also shared the immense love towards the song, calling it a "masterpiece."

Many fans congratulated Taehyung and expressed their belief that he should win the award.

4 BTS members, RM, Jin, j-hope, and Taehyung, receive nominations for the 2025 MAMA Awards

Four out of the seven BTS members, Jin, j-hope, RM, and Taehyung, have received multiple nominations across varied categories at the MAMA Awards 2025. Notably, all these members have been nominated for a Daesang.

These are the categories where Jin, j-hope, and RM have been nominated at the 2025 MAMA awards:

1) Jin:

Best Male Artist
Album of the year: Happy (daesang)
Artist of the year (daesang)
Fan choice (male)

2) j-hope:

Best Dance Performance (Solo male): Mona Lisa
Artist of the year (daesang)
Best male artist
Fan’s Choice Male
Song of the year: Mona Lisa (daesang)

3) RM:

Best Rap & Hip Hop: Stop The Rain
Song of the year: Stop the Rain (daesang)

Winter Ahead is a jazz-pop duet by BTS’ V and Park Hyo-shin, which was released on November 29, 2024. The song’s music video features V portraying two contrasting lives.

Winter Ahead became one of Taehyung’s fastest tracks to reach multiple streaming milestones upon its release. It surpassed 100 million Spotify streams in just 29 days, making it the fastest jazz song by a K-pop solo artist to hit that mark. As of August 2025, it stands at 400 million streams on Spotify.

On the Billboard charts, it left a notable mark. Winter Ahead became the first jazz song by a Korean act in history to debut on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. It was also the longest-charting song by a Korean act on the Billboard Digital Song Sales chart. The song was also selected as one of the 27 best winter songs for the season by Billboard.

Critically, Winter Ahead won the Best Music award at the 2025 "The Fact Music Awards." This win was especially notable because Taehyung had now won this title three years in a row, making him the first K-pop idol ever to do so.

In other news, BTS is expected to release the band's comeback album in March 2026.

About the author

Rujula is a pop culture journalist who covers K-pop at Sportskeeda. She graduated with a bachelors in English Literature from Mumbai University, following which, as a self-proclaimed K-pop fangirl, Rujula pursued her passion for the written word to report on all things Korean. Rujula has over 4 years experience in curating content for diverse companies like Disney (Star Sports), KpopWise, Icy Tales, Nettv4u, and Walking Wicket.

For her, referring to official sources and cross-verifying information are of utmost importance to maintain objectivity and credibility of the information she offers to her readers. She also takes into account social media posts from people experiencing an incident first-hand to add depth and perspective to her story.

While creatively presenting information about an artist’s particular look or campaign is Rujula’s forte, she believes her true strength lies in interviewing celebrities and idols. At Sportskeeda, Rujula has exclusively interviewed famous K-pop groups and idols such as ChoCo, Jae Chong, BLACKSWAN, DKZ, Lee Taevin, E:LFIN, Kim Seong-gyeong, and Hyun-woo.

Rujula’s favorite artists in the K-circle are BTS, Jackson Wang, ENHYPEN, and SEVENTEEN, and she admires them for their humility, genuineness, and generosity. When not busy tracking the latest developments in Korean entertainment, Rujula can be found playing cricket, a sport she has played professionally for over 10 years.

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Edited by Riya Peter