BTS won its first Billboard Music Award in 2017.
The group received the award for Top Social Artist at the 2017 ceremony in Las Vegas. BTS was the first K-pop group to win a Billboard Music Award, marking a major milestone in its growing international profile.
The award was based largely on fan engagement, including votes and social-media activity. BTS competed against established global artists such as Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, Ariana Grande, and Shawn Mendes.
Some readers confuse this achievement with BTS’s later Grammy nominations or its first Billboard 200 number-one album. Those milestones happened afterward. BTS first topped the Billboard 200 in 2018 with Love Yourself: Tear, while its first Grammy nomination came in 2021 for “Dynamite.”