Madonna Is Returning to the VMAs—And Bringing the Show’s History With Her

Madonna is going back to the VMAs.

CBS and MTV announced Wednesday, September 16, that the singer will open the 2026 Video Music Awards on Sunday, September 27, in Los Angeles. It will be Madonna’s first live performance at the ceremony in 23 years, since her headline-making 2003 opening number with Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera.

The 2003 performance became one of the defining television moments of the early-2000s pop era. Madonna performed “Like a Virgin” and “Hollywood” with Spears and Aguilera before kissing both younger stars onstage. The moment generated days of coverage and helped cement the VMAs’ reputation as a place where awards-show convention could be interrupted by spectacle.

But the significance of Madonna’s 2026 return goes beyond revisiting that kiss.

Madonna has been part of the VMAs’ DNA from the beginning. She performed “Like a Virgin” at the first ceremony in 1984, an appearance that helped establish the awards as a venue for theatrical pop performance rather than a conventional industry dinner. She returned with the high-energy staging of “Express Yourself” in 1989 and the acclaimed, period-inspired performance of “Vogue” in 1990. In 1986, she became the first solo female artist to receive MTV’s Video Vanguard Award.

That history makes her booking unusually useful to the VMAs. The ceremony is trying to connect several versions of itself at once: the MTV institution that helped turn music videos into appointment television, the celebrity spectacle associated with the 2000s, and the current awards broadcast expanding across CBS, MTV and Paramount+.

Madonna’s presence gives those eras a single through line. It also arrives at a moment when she is not being presented solely as a legacy act. She enters the ceremony as its leading nominee, with 11 nominations, including nods for Video of the Year, Artist of the Year and Song of the Year. The official announcement describes this as the third time she has led the VMAs nominations; she previously topped the field in connection with “Vogue” in 1990 and “Ray of Light” and “Frozen” in 1998.

That distinction matters. A nostalgia appearance would ask viewers to remember what Madonna once meant to the VMAs. A performance tied to the night’s top nomination haul asks whether she can still function as an active center of the ceremony.

The answer will not be known until the broadcast. CBS and MTV have not announced Madonna’s set list, staging or whether she will be joined by other performers. The official announcement says additional performers, presenters and special guests will be revealed during the week before the show, leaving room for speculation but no confirmed reunion beyond Madonna’s return.

Snoop Dogg will host the ceremony, which is scheduled to air live from Los Angeles on CBS, MTV and Paramount+ at 7:30 p.m. Eastern. The show’s move back to the West Coast is itself a small reset for the franchise: according to The Associated Press, it is the first time since 2017 that the VMAs have chosen a location outside New York or New Jersey.

For Madonna, though, the larger story is simpler. She is returning to the stage that helped define her public mythology—and doing so at an awards show that has spent two decades trying to create another moment as culturally durable as the one she left behind in 2003.