Kanya King Dies at 57 After Founding the MOBO Awards
kanya king, the founder of the MOBO Awards, died on June 3 aged 57 after a battle with colon cancer. Her death removes the force behind an awards show that grew from a home-backed gamble into a national institution for Black music in the UK.
The Mobo Organisation said she died after a “courageous and characteristically determined battle with colon cancer,” and added: “The world was a profoundly better place with Kanya King in it.” That language fits the career she built from the ground up in 1996, when she launched the awards as a single mother from a Kilburn council estate.
King and the MOBOs
King remortgaged her home alone, without institutional backing and without industry support, to get the awards off the ground. Six weeks later, the first MOBO Awards was broadcast to the nation, a speed that says as much about her persistence as the event’s early appetite among artists and viewers.
The list of names associated with the ceremony shows how quickly it became part of the UK music establishment: Amy Winehouse, Stormzy, Olivia Dean, Raye and So Solid Crew all featured among the artists it celebrated. That range matters because the awards were not built as a niche side event; they became one of the few major stages built specifically around music of Black origin and Black British musicians who were often overlooked elsewhere.
CBE in 2018, honour in 2025
King’s work drew formal recognition in 2018, when she was made a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List. Seven years later, in 2025, she received an Ivors Academy Honour, extending the record of institutional respect that followed the awards she had already made unavoidable.
Her public presence did not fade after her diagnosis. In 2025, she appeared on stage at the Mobos in Newcastle just months after it, and told the audience: “I never allowed someone to define my limits. Not in life. Not in business. And I’m certainly not going to have that happen now.”
A gap she filled
The Mobo Awards filled a gap in British music by giving Black artists a platform that industry events did not reliably provide. That is why her death lands beyond one ceremony: it removes the founder who made the platform, the voice who defended it, and the entrepreneur who kept it independent long enough to matter.
The organisation’s own farewell was blunt: “The Mobo family is heartbroken, but also endlessly grateful, proud and inspired by everything she gave to music, culture and the generations who will follow in her footsteps.” For readers in the industry, the practical takeaway is simple — the awards she built still stand, but the person who made them possible is gone, and the standard she set now belongs to the people who have to keep it visible.
