How Korea's Top Girl Group Has Changed Every Year Since 2010

Every autumn, several major Korean music shows hand out a trophy Korean fans treat as an informal verdict on the year: Best Female Group. The Mnet Asian Music Awards (MAMA) version of it has run every year since 2000.

Lined up from 2010 to 2025, its winners form a year-by-year record of Korea's most popular girl group, based on chart data and industry judging rather than online buzz alone. Reading that record in order reveals three disbandments, one broken boy-group monopoly, and a 2025 contract dispute that leaves the newest era's status unresolved.

Sixteen years, one recurring trophy

MAMA's Best Female Group prize is decided by a mix of sales and streaming data from Korea's Circle Chart (formerly Gaon Chart) and a panel of industry judges, not an open fan vote. That mix is what makes it a workable proxy for popularity, rather than a contest won by whichever fandom votes hardest online.

Here is every winner from 2010 through 2025.

Six acts split sixteen years. Twice's four wins are the most of any act in the award's history, one ahead of Girls' Generation's three.

Why one trophy can't mean the same thing everywhere

International readers often equate popularity with the biggest numbers on Spotify or the Billboard Hot 100. Inside Korea, popularity is tracked differently, through domestic streaming on Melon and Genie, physical sales tracked by Hanteo and Circle Chart, and weekly wins on TV music-countdown shows.

Those are the figures MAMA's panel actually weighs. A group can be the most recognized K-pop act on earth internationally and still lose the domestic prize to a rival that simply outsold it at home that year, which happened to BLACKPINK more than once.

One more term worth explaining: nearly every idol group operates under Korea's agency system, in which a company scouts and trains performers, usually unpaid, for years before debut, then manages their contracts afterward. Regulators cap standard idol contracts at seven years, a rule that shapes much of this list.

Korea also runs more than one major year-end show, including the Melon Music Awards, the Golden Disc Awards, and the Circle Chart Music Awards, each with its own voting formula. They usually agree on the year's dominant act, but not always, which is exactly why this piece tracks a single consistent award across sixteen years rather than mixing winners from different shows.

2NE1 and Girls' Generation split the early 2010s

2NE1 opened the decade with a 2010 win built on their album "To Anyone." Girls' Generation then won three times, in 2011, 2013, and 2015, on the strength of singles like "The Boys" and "I Got a Boy."

Both groups belonged to K-pop's so-called second generation, acts that debuted roughly between 2007 and 2012 and built the genre's modern touring and chart infrastructure. By 2016 their paths had already started to split, for reasons tied directly to that seven-year contract rule.

Sistar's summer reign, then a wave of disbandments

Sistar interrupted Girls' Generation's run twice, winning in 2012 and 2014 on the back of a Korean tradition: releasing one big single every summer, a run fans nicknamed the group's "Summer Queen" era.

2016 then became what fans still call the industry's seven-year cliff. Four major groups ended within roughly a year of each other, all tied to expired contracts.

• 2NE1 — disbanded November 2016
• Kara — disbanded 2016
• 4Minute — disbanded 2016
• Sistar — disbanded June 2017, their exact 7th anniversary

Twice's Cheer Up broke a boy-group grip on the grand prize

Twice's 2016 single "Cheer Up" topped Korea's Gaon Digital Chart as the year's best-performing song and won Song of the Year, a Daesang, or grand prize, reserved for a show's single biggest winner, at the Melon Music Awards. It was the group's first Daesang and the first time a girl group had won a top overall Daesang since Girls' Generation years earlier.

Twice went on to win Best Female Group four times, in 2016, 2018, 2019, and 2021, more than any other act, powered by singles like "TT," "Fancy," and "Feel Special" that kept outselling rivals at home even as competitors drew more attention abroad.

Twice did not run the table every year in between. Red Velvet interrupted the streak in 2017 with "Red Flavor," a single that topped Korea's Circle Digital Chart and gave SM Entertainment a new flagship act just as Girls' Generation entered its own extended hiatus, effectively passing the label's spotlight from one generation to the next.

BLACKPINK went global without winning every year at home

BLACKPINK has arguably been the best-known girl group internationally for much of this period, yet the domestic scoreboard shows a narrower footprint: two wins, in 2020 and 2022. In April 2023 they became the first K-pop act, and the first Asian act, to headline Coachella, four years after becoming the first K-pop girl group to play the festival at all.

That gap between global stature and the domestic count illustrates why popularity needs a defined metric. Nine BLACKPINK songs have charted on the Billboard Hot 100, yet in most of the years covered here, a different group outperformed them on the numbers MAMA's panel weighs at home.

NewJeans' one-year sprint to the top of both charts

NewJeans debuted in July 2022 under ADOR, a label under HYBE, and needed barely a year to win Best Female Group at the 2023 MAMA, beating established acts including Twice and aespa. Their single "Ditto" made them the fourth K-pop girl group ever to chart on the Billboard Hot 100.

By mid-2023 they had five simultaneous Hot 100 entries and a Billboard 200 number one, the fastest any K-pop act had reached either milestone. For once, domestic and global numbers agreed: NewJeans led both.

aespa's Supernova broke a 20-year-old chart record

aespa, an SM Entertainment group built around a paired-avatar concept, followed NewJeans by winning in both 2024 and 2025. Their 2024 single "Supernova" held Melon's number-one spot for 15 consecutive weeks, the longest run atop that chart since the streaming service launched two decades earlier.

The song swept Song of the Year honors at MAMA, the Melon Music Awards, and the Golden Disc Awards that same year. aespa repeated as Best Female Group in 2025 behind "Whiplash," which also charted on the Billboard Global 200.

A contract fight left 2026's answer unresolved

NewJeans' 2023 win came under an arrangement that has since collapsed. In November 2024 the group tried to terminate its ADOR contract and rebrand as NJZ, after the removal of their producer, Min Hee-jin. ADOR, backed by parent company HYBE, sued to enforce the original agreement.

A Seoul court ruled in October 2025 that the contract, which runs through 2029, remained valid. Three members returned to ADOR that November; a fourth member, Danielle, had her contract terminated in December 2025, while a fifth member's status stayed under discussion.

Whoever wins Best Female Group when the 2026 MAMA airs later this year will do so against a competitor whose lineup, as of this writing, is still not fully settled.

Why the list doesn't settle every argument

A single award, however consistent, is still one lens. The Melon Music Awards' overall Artist of the Year Daesang, a separate and arguably higher-prestige prize open to every act, not just girl groups, went to a female group only twice in this entire span: Twice in 2016 and NewJeans in 2023.

Every other year went to BTS, EXO, IU, or another act, which shows boy groups and soloists still dominate Korea's single biggest annual honor even in years a girl group led the female-group category specifically. "Korea's most popular girl group" and "Korea's most popular artist" have almost never been the same answer.

Best Female Group wins by act, 2010–2025

Frequently asked

Which K-pop girl group has won MAMA Best Female Group the most times?

Twice has won four times, in 2016, 2018, 2019, and 2021 — more than any other act.

Why didn't BLACKPINK win Best Female Group every year despite being so famous internationally?

MAMA's award is based on domestic chart data and industry judging rather than global fame, so BLACKPINK won only in 2020 and 2022 while other groups outsold them at home in other years.

What happened to NewJeans after their 2023 MAMA win?

NewJeans tried to leave ADOR and rebrand as NJZ in November 2024; a Seoul court ruled their contract valid in October 2025, and member Danielle's contract was terminated in December 2025.