The MTV Awards will salute George Michael with a tribute performance from Raye, Sombr, and Teddy Swims at the 2026 MTV Video Music Awards. The 42nd edition airs live on Sunday, September 27, with Snoop Dogg hosting, putting the homage inside a show built to turn legacy acts into live TV moments.
George Michael at 53
George Michael died at age 53 on Christmas Day, December 25, 2016, at his home in Goring-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. The coroner said there was no need for an inquest because the cause of death was natural, a finding that sits alongside the medical details Darren Salter cited: dilated cardiomyopathy with myocarditis and fatty liver.
Salter said, “As there is a confirmed natural cause of death, being Dilated Cardiomyopathy with Myocarditis and Fatty Liver, the investigation is being discontinued.” That language closed the formal case, but it did not close the public record around a singer who rose to fame with Wham! in the 1980s before his solo career changed the scale of his audience.
Raye, Sombr, Teddy Swims
Raye, Sombr, and Teddy Swims are the names attached to the tribute, with Adam Blackstone directing the performance. That pairing points to a live arrangement designed around voices rather than a single front-person imitation, which is the cleaner way to stage a catalog as broad as Michael’s without flattening it into nostalgia.
The timing also does some work on its own. The tribute lands 40 years after the release of Faith and nearly a decade after Michael’s death, so the show is using a milestone and a memorial in the same slot instead of treating the performance as a throwaway interlude.
September 27 on CBS
The 2026 VMAs air live from 7:30 to 9:30pm ET, simulcast on MTV and streaming on Paramount+ in the US, with a PT window of 4:30 to 6:30pm. For viewers, that means the tribute will sit inside a tightly packaged two-hour broadcast, where the live window is short and the performance order will matter.
Kenny Goss, Michael’s former partner, once said, “I think his body just gave up. All these years, it was just weak.” He also said, “We just want closure, we want the funeral to happen, it's been a long time now,” and that unfinished emotional history is part of why a tribute like this still lands as more than a routine awards-show booking.
The open question is simple: which songs or specific George Michael moments will make the cut when the 2026 MTV VMAs put the tribute on air.
