Taylor Swift, Madonna and more A-listers brought star power to the 2026 MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday night.
Madonna opened the show with Sabrina Carpenter and Charlie xcx, while Swift closed it down with the video of the year win (they also made other appearances throughout the night to collect awards and, in Swift’s case, debut her new video for “Patient Zero”).
In between, the show welcomed performers including Raye, Sombr and Lisa, paid tribute to Dolly Parton and George Michael, and presented Nirvana with the Video Vanguard Award, among other highlights.
The day after the show, The Hollywood Reporter caught up with producer Van Toffler to ask some burning questions on all the big moments — including his own favorite.
Congratulations on the show’s big ratings! To what do you attribute that?
It’s probably a combination of a whole bunch of factors, from a really good football game as a lead-in, and you’ve got Taylor Swift winning awards and also premiering a sneak peek of her new music video, Madonna performing with Sabrina [Carpenter] and Charli [xcx], a George Michael tribute with great singers, and Nirvana getting the Video Vanguard Award. So we covered the icons but then we had great young acts from Lisa and Raye and Sienna Spiro and Sombr, and then, of course, Young Lean and Gener8ion, which for us, living in the music universe daily, was a viral video that probably mostly appealed to people in their teens and under 25. But we did our best to re-create it on the stage, and I think people were blown away by that performance as well. So I think it had a bit of everything for all the different demos, new and old, and different genres of music as well, and that probably helped the numbers.
The Gener8ion and Young Lean performance was my favorite.
That was mind-blowing, but it’s always in the great tradition of MTV and the VMAs to showcase new talent who haven’t gotten the global stage yet. And to see Sienna Spiro and, to some extent, Raye who is a little more well-known, stand there and sing their asses off, it’s great to see that and the kind of response they get. And once you have the foundation of Madonna and a whole bunch of stars, you can really take risks with [up-and-comers] like Young Lean and Sienna and Lisa.
It really did seem like a show for multiple generations. What do you make of all of those cross-generational winners? And Madonna, who won seven awards — the most of the night — more than four decades into her career?
It’s what’s happening in music. When I was [an exec] at MTV going back to the ’80s, I don’t think we had anybody above the age of 35 on the VMAs, to tell you the truth, right? And music didn’t cross generations. There was no streaming; people went to rock shows that were in the older demo, and then EDM came in and hip-hop and grunge, and that was its own unique walled-off audience. But, you know, when streaming provided you access to everything, you’re just kind of like, well, this is good music. I don’t care that it’s from last week or the 1970s; it’s just really good, and I kind of dig it. And so that enabled us to put people like Madonna, who I might add didn’t perform … her [previous] hits. She was playing new songs, and with very modern huge artists like Charli and Sabrina, who were influenced by Madonna, who wouldn’t be here without her. Similarly, to have Kacey Musgraves perform a Dolly song, she’s in her 30s, she’s giving tribute to an 80-year-old woman. As Taylor did at the end of her speech [dedicating her video of the year award to Parton], you’ve got modern artists really absorbing the great iconic artists of the past and kind of modernizing it and putting it in their own take, and I think that’s what’s happened with music. So it’s allowed us to really cross generations and [appeal to] a wide swath of the demos who love music and put it all on one stage. And that didn’t always happen, but I think it’s really evolving with what’s going on in music.
Is having the show airing on CBS now also part of wanting to appeal to multiple demos?
Oh, absolutely. I mean, CBS is a different demo than MTV, and it’s kind of a bit broader and also they deliver a football audience. MTV wasn’t having such a broad audience and it skewed a bit male, and CBS has a broader audience, so that is definitely part of it. I think part of the secret sauce of the show is, particularly as a producer, having worked in movies and TV, working with musicians is a much more collaborative process in the sense that movie actors, they read a script, they show up, then the filmmakers go and edit it and deliver it. When you deal with such individualistic talent that’s so opinionated, you can’t really overproduce them. You’ve got to listen to them and be humble. Madonna, as an example, we had an idea for her taking over the logo and the bathroom stalls, and she’s like, OK, well I’ll take it from here. And I think you just have to kind of nurture them, give them the best tech, screen, audio people and let them do their thing. And as you saw, Madonna kind of did her thing, and she called all those people herself that were in her performance.
You mentioned football being a lead-in. The broadcast was delayed, but the actual show started on time at the Peacock Theater. Did you talk about delaying the start of the show to keep it live on-air?
We were always going to start on time. We had a sense that the football game may go over, but based on the talent and call times and the venue, we were going to start at 4:30 on the dot and, and go as if it were live. I heard it was a good football game, apparently. [Laughs] I think CBS viewers expect that, but MTV viewers probably weren’t aware what was going on when they tuned in and the show didn’t start on time. These things happen, particularly on Sunday in football season, and I don’t know if it hurt us or helped us, but we were always gonna go on time.
Adam Lambert was a surprise performer for the George Michael tribute, and a perfect person to end the tribute with. Why did you decide to keep that a surprise?
The whole George Michael tribute was a work in progress, to tell you the truth. I’d like to take much more credit for it than we deserve, but I can’t. We worked with the estate and certain people came in early. We always knew Raye was gonna be on the show. We knew she was a fan. So we always wanted her to do it and Sombr then came in, and then Teddy [Swims] came in at the last minute, and so did Adam and the other singers at the end. So it was really just the way it kind of got locked in at the last minute, so it wasn’t like, hey, let’s hold this back or not hold this back. It kind of all came together, and I thought Adam killed it at the end. “Freedom!” is such a great, such a great song, and George was such a seminal part of music and MTV’s history, and so happy we got to do that.
Bruno Mars’ performance was also a surprise, but he wasn’t actually able to be there in person due to his tour schedule. Can you talk about how that came about?
It was impossible to get him off tour. But he had such a good year, such a good record. He got so many nominations that we wanted him to be a part of the show, but we couldn’t get him there, live, so we all decided to do a remote, and he’s just arguably one of the best performers out there.
Kacey Musgraves’ tribute to Dolly Parton was so touching. She also is on tour and wasn’t able to be there in person on Sunday night. Can you talk about how that performance came about?
Kasey was in the venue in person, just pre-taped a couple of days ago because she had a tour and a conflict but she was our choice to give Dolly a tribute because Dolly loved her. I got to work with Dolly a couple of years ago, and I know Kasey was influenced by Dolly and loved Dolly, and she felt like the right person, but we couldn’t get her off the tour date. And so she graciously decided to say, you know, I’ll fly in for it and tape it at the venue with an audience, which we did. We found, with the estate, this great piece of Dolly footage when she was about Kasey’s age and she hosted a variety show and, she reveals her kind of fun, salty sense of humor and then sings a bar or two of “I Will Always Love You.” We loved that clip, and we sent it to Kasey. She decided to do “I Will Always Love You,” and it was her idea to say, well, why don’t we button it with, I’ll come into it with Dolly. Then we went full on to Kasey, and then we went back to Dolly to close it and have that wonderful bye-bye, and it just felt like the right way to honor Dolly.
Kacey has performed Parton’s “Here You Come Again” a number of times, so it was a nice surprise to hear her sing a different song.
It’s a risky song to sing, right, but we were so pleasantly surprised. But she nailed it and did it with such great emotion, so we were really happy with the way that turned out.
Pat Smear was smoking onstage when Nirvana was accepting the Video Vanguard Award? There is a lot of speculation online, including maybe he was honoring Kurt Cobain in his own way. Do you know why he was smoking?
Because Pat Smear does whatever Pap Smear wants to do. [Laughs] You know, networks typically don’t allow smoking, but hey, you come in the venue, you have a cigarette, and, you have a lighter. There you go. Like I said, you can’t control musicians. … I’m not sure it was that premeditated.
Finally, did you have a favorite moment of the show?
It’s probably not what you expect. We try to have a climax in every act, you know, there are nine acts in the show. We try to put a performance in each act. We try to uniquely stage it — obviously, Madonna opened with such great energy and, and Raye had this huge live band, and you saw Lisa re-created Bangkok and then Yung Lean, which was insane choreography. But for me, the great tradition of the VMAs is to expose newcomers who haven’t been exposed on a kind of global level, and we did that with Sienna Spiro. Just to sit there and talk to her about how excited she was, and to give her that showcase where she kind of stood there on that turntable and sang her heart out, kind of like Amy Winehouse. It really was a touching, wonderful moment, and I just loved it. … It just was wonderful to give her that spotlight. I’m gonna guess tomorrow you’re gonna see some major movement in streaming in some of those artists that had killer performances.
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