The second Filipino Music Awards handed out nineteen trophies on a Tuesday night in October, and sixteen different acts carried them home.
Billy Crawford, KC Montero, and Joey Mead King hosted the ceremony at the SM Mall of Asia Arena on October 6. The FMAs are organized by Modern Media Group, the publisher of Billboard Philippines. At the first edition a year earlier, Joey Mead King had shared the hosting with Michael Sager and Elijah Canlas. KC Montero missed that night entirely and was stepping onto the FMA stage as host for the first time.
That first ceremony, in October 2025, belonged to SB19 and Cup of Joe. SB19 won six trophies. Cup of Joe won Song of the Year for “Multo” and Album of the Year for Silakbo. Between editions, Cup of Joe’s audience only expanded.
“Multo” had come out on September 14, 2024, topped three national charts, and went on to spend 33 non-consecutive weeks at number one on the Billboard Philippines Hot 100, the longest run in that chart’s history. It also became the first Filipino song to enter the Billboard Global 200, peaking at number 80. By February 2026 it had passed Up Dharma Down’s “Tadhana” to become the most-streamed OPM song on Spotify.
Billboard Philippines named Cup of Joe their number one artist of 2025. Silakbo, their debut album, was structured around the five stages of grief, each section of tracks mapped to one phase. The band started in Baguio in 2018, when college freshmen Gian Bernardino and Raphaell Ridao were invited to perform at their school’s Buwan ng Wika celebration and decided to keep the group going.
Some of the later members were dormitory roommates before they joined. In February 2025, Cup of Joe held a two-night Silakbo concert at the Araneta Coliseum. From a school gig in the Cordilleras to the country’s biggest arena stages, and then a second FMA ceremony where they went home without a single trophy.
BINI took Artist of the Year and Tour of the Year for the Signals World Tour 2026, their second world tour. It launched at the Mall of Asia Arena on June 20 and ran into November, reaching Cebu, Honolulu, Los Angeles, New York, Melbourne, Auckland, and Sydney. In March 2026, BINI had presented Regine Velasquez with the Billboard Philippines Woman of the Year award. Later that year, both BINI and Regine were collecting trophies at the same ceremony.
Song of the Year went to “Since Day One” by Skusta Clee featuring Flow G. Their first collaboration, “Laya,” had come out in December 2023. “Since Day One” followed on February 1, 2026, through Saucy Island Records. The track entered the Billboard Philippines Hot 100 at number 65, hit number 9 within two weeks, and reached number one by the chart dated April 18.
Skusta Clee, born Daryl Jake Borja Ruiz, co-founded the rap trio O.C. Dawgs in 2012 and joined Ex Battalion in 2016 before building a solo career. At the first FMA, his single “Kalimutan Ka” had been nominated for Song of the Year and lost to “Multo.” This time, “Since Day One” took both Song of the Year and Hip-Hop Song of the Year.
Album of the Year went to Maki for Kolorcoaster. Maki is Ralph William Datoon, a singer-songwriter from Quezon City who was rejected at the first season of The Voice Teens in 2017. He signed with Tarsier Records in 2021 after a friend shared his demo tape with an A&R representative.
His single “Dilaw,” the Tagalog word for yellow, became the first number one on the relaunched Billboard Philippines Hot 100 in July 2024 and the third Filipino song to appear on the global Spotify chart, after Juan Karlos’s “Ere” and gins&melodies’ “Babaero.”
The album title is a portmanteau of “kolor” and “rollercoaster,” and the singles follow the theme: “Dilaw” for yellow, “Bughaw” for blue. Kolorcoaster came out on September 19, 2025. By February 2026, Maki was filling the Araneta Coliseum for a repeat show subtitled “One More Ride.” His first solo concert had been at the smaller New Frontier Theater in November 2024.
Pop Song of the Year went to “Baduy” by VVINK, with DJ Love and Pio Balbuena. “Baduy” is the Filipino word for tacky, and the song wears the label with pride, mixing P-pop vocals with budots percussion and a verse in the Waray language. DJ Love, born Sherwin Tuna, is widely credited as the originator of budots, a fast, street-born electronic dance genre from Davao City. Before his remixes, dance crews in Davao’s Camus neighborhood were already moving to electronic music.
DJ Love built on that energy, producing tracks at an internet cafe in the early 2000s that drew from the sounds of the street around him. Budots eventually reached an international audience through a Boiler Room showcase. In early 2025, DJ Love was hospitalized with heart failure in Davao and needed surgery. Fellow artists organized a fundraiser, with incentives that included a budots producer pack and rare DJ Love mixes. He recovered enough to return to performing.
Alternative Song of the Year went to IV OF SPADES for “Kabisado,” from their second album, Andalucia. The album came out of a reunion. The band had been on hiatus since August 2020, and in July 2025 they returned with two surprise singles, “Aura” and “Nanaman.” Andalucia was released on November 5, 2025, through Sony Music Philippines.
It was their first album with all four original members in the studio, because guitarist Unique Salonga had left in 2018 to pursue a solo career. When he returned, the group booked the Mall of Asia Arena for December 12 and 13, 2025, and sold both nights out. “Kabisado” was written by Blaster Silonga and entered the Billboard Philippines Hot 100 in April 2026, climbing to number 6 by late May.
Rock Song of the Year went to Typecast for “What Would It Take (For You To Realize The True Evil In This World?).” The title alone could fill half a teleprompter. Typecast formed in Santa Rosa, Laguna, in 1999, the same year Urbandub started in Cebu. In 2025 the two bands ran a joint 25th anniversary tour, starting at the New Frontier Theater in Quezon City and reaching Singapore, London, Melbourne, and Sydney by early 2026.
Vocalist Steve Badiola has fronted Typecast since the beginning. Their debut album, The Infatuation Is Always There, came out in 2004. The 2007 single “Will You Ever Learn” won Song of the Year at the NU Rock Awards and pushed them into wider recognition, and during that stretch they opened for international acts including Thursday and Dashboard Confessional. In 2019, two decades into their career, they released their first Tagalog-language song, “Mulat Na Mata.”
Folk Song of the Year went to Ben&Ben for “Lifetime (Reimagined).” The original was released in June 2020, running two minutes and fifty-one seconds, inspired by a fan’s comment on the “Pagtingin” music video. The reimagined version, released March 31, 2026, stretches to four minutes and thirty-eight seconds, with new verses, an instrumental break, and a bridge the original never had. It reached number one on the Billboard Philippines Hot 100. Two songs from the FMA winners list hit that peak in 2026.
R&B Song of the Year ended in a tie. Denise Julia won for “LOVE AGAIN” and Alamat won for “Sinigang.” Denise Julia, born in 2002 in Tondo, Manila, broke through on TikTok with the single “NVMD” before releasing her debut EP, Sweet Nothings (Chapter 1), through Sony Music in November 2023. A follow-up, Sweet Nothings (Chapter 2), continued the series. Alamat, a six-member P-pop group formed in 2020 by Viva Artists Agency and Ninuno Media, sings in multiple Philippine languages.
Their debut single “kbye” used seven of them. “Sinigang” comes from their 2025 album Destino, and the title is a wordplay: “sinisigaw hanggang ngayon,” roughly “still shouting until now.” The music video, starring actress Joy Barcoma, plays on the food reference by having the members serve her bowls of the soup. Member Mo drafted the original demo, and Taneo built the production around the chord progressions of classic Filipino love ballads.
SB19 took the two Filipino People’s Choice awards, Artist and Song, plus Concert of the Year. International People’s Choice Artist went to BTS. Music Company of the Year went to ABS-CBN, taking the trophy from Sony Music Philippines, which had won it at the first ceremony.
Regine Velasquez received the Lifetime Achievement award. She started in 1986 under the stage name Chona, releasing a single called “Love Me Again” on OctoArts International that did not sell. She changed her name, put out a self-titled album, and in December 1989 won the grand prize at the Asia-Pacific Singing Contest in Hong Kong, performing “You’ll Never Walk Alone” and “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going.”
Asian press started calling her Asia’s Songbird after that night. Over the decades that followed, her work earned more than a hundred awards and nominations, including multiple Awit Awards. In 2000, her duet with Jacky Cheung, “In Love With You,” reached number one on MTV Asia’s Top 20 Asian Videos. In March 2026, BINI presented her with Billboard Philippines’ Woman of the Year award. She was marking her fortieth year in the industry.
The Tribute Award went to Francis Magalona. His wife Pia and daughter Maxene accepted it. Francis M died on March 6, 2009, at forty-four, from leukemia. He had started as a breakdancer in the 1980s before turning to music. His 1990 debut album, Yo!, is recognized as the first commercially released Filipino rap album, and “Mga Kababayan Ko” became an anthem of Filipino identity.
He won multiple Awit Awards for Best Rap Recording and received a Pioneer Hall of Fame Award at the first Philippine Hip-Hop Music Awards in 2005. In September 2026, weeks before the FMA ceremony, Maxene spoke about hearing her father’s music in the film Forgotten Island, calling the experience both exciting and deeply personal.
The Music Foundation Award went to the Organisasyon ng Pilipinong Mang-aawit, the singers’ organization founded in 1986, shortly after the EDSA People Power Revolution. Singer Celeste Legaspi once recalled that nearly forty artists gathered at a venue in Makati to elect a board and choose the name.
The organization later worked with the National Commission for Culture and the Arts to help establish Linggo ng Musikang Pilipino, the annual celebration of Filipino music. Its initials, OPM, match the term “Original Pilipino Music,” which Danny Javier of the Apo Hiking Society had coined years earlier as a label for Filipino-made recordings.
Breakthrough Artist of the Year went to fitterkarma. The band’s name comes from two tracks on Radiohead’s 1997 album OK Computer: “Fitter Happier” and “Karma Police.” Vocalist Joao de Leon started the project alone in 2019, writing songs before anyone else was involved.
The full band came together in 2023 at De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde, where the members were studying music production. The current lineup is Joao de Leon on vocals and guitar, Sophia Miranda on bass, Sanders Bayas on drums, and Mikee Mendoza on guitar. They rebranded from Joao’s name partly because it was difficult to market and pronounce.
Their breakout single, “Pag-ibig ay Kanibalismo II,” began as part of Joao’s thesis EP for his music production degree. It was released on Valentine’s Day 2025 and climbed to number one on both Spotify Philippines and the Billboard Philippines Hot 100 by December of that year.
Former keyboardist Addy Pantig sang on the original recording but left the band during its rise in late 2025. In January 2026, fitterkarma overtook Cup of Joe for the top spot on Spotify Philippines. A song that started as a college requirement was now the number one track on Spotify Philippines.
In February 2026, the band released “Aswang sa Maynila,” featuring Kai Sevillano of Novocrane, their first collaboration with another artist. That same month, they opened for the Canadian band Men I Trust at the Filinvest Tent in Alabang. On September 9, they put out their thirteen-track debut album, whose title translates to “if we’re in a horror movie, surely I will be the first one you will kill.”
The original reads “kung tayo’y nasa isang horror na pelikula, tiyak ako ang una mong papatayin.” Ten days later, on September 19, they headlined the Metropolitan Theater in Manila for their first major solo concert, with The Manila String Machine providing orchestral arrangements. The Metropolitan Theater is a 1930s art deco landmark in Ermita that reopened in 2021 after years of closure and restoration.
Their songs draw from Philippine folklore and gothic imagery. The album includes tracks called “Purgatoryo” and “Kung Bampira Lang Tayo.” They write about aswang. They write about love that devours. A band that came together in a college music production program three years ago now holds a national Breakthrough Artist trophy, collected on a stage it shared with Regine Velasquez and Typecast.
If you could hand one of the nineteen trophies to a different artist, which award would it be, and who would you give it to?
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