vmas 2021

The VMAs Will Finally Take Place at Barclays Center This September

Keke Palmer performs outdoors at the 2020 VMAs, which will move inside in 2021. Photo: Jeff Kravitz/MTV VMAs 2020/Getty Images for MTV

In one of the messier sagas of adaptation to our pandemic world, MTV’s 2020 Video Music Awards were originally set to take place at Barclays Center last August, before organizers realized that holding an event at an indoor venue, as the spread of the airborne coronavirus was at its peak, wasn’t a wonderful idea. Now, the VMAs will give that idea another go in 2021, with this year’s awards — honoring the best of the year’s music videos and featuring the wildest of the year’s celebrity musician antics — taking place at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on September 12. What’s more, a press release touts the show as one of the “first fan-filled awards shows†since the start of the pandemic, adding that the VMAs will “bring fans together from across the globe,†but not much more detail than that. And with the show taking place a day after the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, MTV also announced plans to collaborate with New York City on its volunteer efforts to commemorate the day. NYC and the VMAs: back!

The VMAs Will Finally Take Place at Barclays This September