The MTV Video Music Award for Best Rock was first given out in , one of the four original genre categories added to the VMAs that year. In its first year, the award was called Best Heavy Metal Video, and from 1990 to 1995, it was renamed Best Metal/Hard Rock Video. The category underwent a third, brief name change in 1996, when it was renamed Best Hard Rock Video. In 1997, the award acquired its most enduring name, Best Rock Video, which it retained until 2016. The following year, the word "Video" was removed from all genre categories at the VMAs (despite nominations still going to specific videos), giving this award its current name: Best Rock.
Like all other genre categories at the VMAs, this category was retired briefly in , when the VMAs were revamped and most original categories were eliminated. In 2008, though, MTV brought back this award, along with several of the others that had been retired in 2007.
Aerosmith is the most frequent winner of this award, with a total of four wins between 1990 and 1998. The Foo Fighters and Linkin Park are the most nominated acts in this category, having received ten nominations each. Closely following them is Fall Out Boy, with nine nominations. In 1995, White Zombie's bassist Sean Yseult became the first woman to win this award, while in 2014, New Zealand singer Lorde became the first female solo act to win this male-dominated category.
Recipients
1980s + Year Winner(s) Video Nominees Guns N' Roses "Sweet Child o' Mine"
1990s + Year Winner(s) Video Nominees Aerosmith "Janie's Got a Gun" Aerosmith "The Other Side" Metallica "Enter Sandman" Pearl Jam "Jeremy" Soundgarden "Black Hole Sun" White Zombie "More Human than Human" Metallica "Until It Sleeps" Aerosmith "Falling in Love (Is Hard on the Knees)" Aerosmith "Pink" Korn "Freak on a Leash"
2000s + Year Winner(s) Video Nominees Limp Bizkit "Break Stuff" Limp Bizkit "Rollin' (Air Raid Vehicle)" Linkin Park "In the End" Linkin Park "Somewhere I Belong" Jet "Are You Gonna Be My Girl" Green Day "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" AFI "Miss Murder" colspan="4" Linkin Park "Shadow of the Day" Green Day "21 Guns"
2010s + Year Winner(s) Video Nominees Thirty Seconds to Mars "Kings and Queens" Foo Fighters "Walk" Coldplay "Paradise" Thirty Seconds to Mars "Up in the Air" Lorde "Royals" Fall Out Boy "Uma Thurman" Twenty One Pilots "Heathens" Twenty One Pilots "Heavydirtysoul" Imagine Dragons "Whatever It Takes" Panic! at the Disco "High Hopes"
2020s + Year Winner(s) Video Nominees Coldplay "Orphans" John Mayer "Last Train Home" Red Hot Chili Peppers "Black Summer" Måneskin "The Loneliest" 2024 Lenny Kravitz "Human" 2025 Coldplay "All My Love"2026 -
Statistics Multiple wins 4 wins Aerosmith
3 wins Coldplay Linkin Park
2 wins Metallica Green Day Limp Bizkit Thirty Seconds to Mars Twenty One Pilots
Multiple nominations 10 nominations Foo Fighters Linkin Park
9 nominations Fall Out Boy
8 nominations Aerosmith Green Day
7 nominations Coldplay Metallica
5 nominations Evanescence Imagine Dragons Lenny Kravitz
4 nominations Panic! at the Disco Thirty Seconds to Mars Twenty One Pilots
3 nominations Rage Against the Machine Limp Bizkit Korn Paramore Muse Red Hot Chili Peppers Kings of Leon The Black Keys The Killers
2 nominations Guns N' Roses Def Leppard Faith No More Alice in Chains Marilyn Manson Creed Kid Rock Weezer Mumford & Sons Arctic Monkeys Florence + the Machine Jack White John Mayer
See also MTV Europe Music Award for Best Rock
Notes
References