Madonna carried the 2026 MTV Video Music Awards, because for a show that has made its name by featuring the biggest names in music, it was light on major stars. It also didn’t help that the entire telecast was delayed 20 minutes due to a football game going into overtime on CBS. How dare they make millions of girls and gays wait while we are eagerly anticipating Madonna’s opening performance?

When the show did finally start, the queen of pop made her return to the VMA stage for her first performance at the event since 2003, when she famously kissed Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. That performance was her acknowledging the next generation of girls that her art had inspired. Naturally, her return to the VMAs all these decades later was a similar exchange, because she’s still around to see the next-next generation after that. In an energetic Confessions II medley, Madge performed “Bring Your Love” with Sabrina Carpenter and “Danceteria After Hours” with Charli xcx. It perfectly echoes the last time she took the VMA stage, showcasing that her reach has now extended past millennial to connect with the gen z girlies.

One of Madonna’s strengths in her live performances is her ability to bring a music video to life, and for this performance she brought the entire album era and aesthetic to the stage, from the opening video where she proclaims “mother is here” to the club bathroom of the “Danceteria” video. The VMAs are historically about creating memorable moments that will make you gasp at the TV, and the sheer amount of cameos that showed up on stage had me gasping at every sighting. Sabrina Carpenter! Charli xcx! Seth Rogen! Sombr! Tony Ward!? Julia Garner! DEBI F-CKING MAZAR! I can’t begin to tell you all how loud I screamed when Madonna walked out of those bathroom stalls hand in hand with Debi. The entire bar washroom scene from the “Confessions II” short film was on that stage and it was fabulous. I also especially liked the choice of having Seth Rogen join the group, an obvious nod to the upcoming guest stint she filmed with Julia Garner on The Studio.

Can we also acknowledge how many appearances Julia Garner has made as an 80s Madonna this year? If that doesn’t help speed up the process of getting that biopic made soon, I don’t know what will. And yes, at this point Julia Garner is absolutely one of Madonna’s industry children.

Let’s call it like it is, Madonna obviously isn’t performing at the same standard that she used to and that she established, and there were a few moments she was caught slipping with her microphone but also who the f-ck cares. She was giving us her signature yoga poses, hip thrusts, hair flips, sassy attitude and stacked list of cameos. The fact that she commands the stage like she does at 68-years-old is both inspiring and bad-ass. I wouldn’t expect anything less from mother.

The entire evening felt like a dedicated celebration of the incredible legacy that she has created with MTV over the last 43 years. Similar to what they did with Mariah Carey last years, last night’s event was MTV’s opportunity to make good for not acknowledging Madonna’s contributions since the new millennium. And just as Mariah had Ariana Grande by her side, Madge had Sabrina Carpenter and Charli xcx on hers. Sabrina and Charli performed with her yes, but they also were by her side throughout separate instances of the ceremony to both hold her up and bow down. M and Sabrina accepted the award for Best Collaboration, where Madge hilariously calls out Sabrina for taking five days to respond to her request for a collaboration. In fact, that speech was just one of the many cheeky statements she made while accepting an award – and she accepted three of them, with a final tally of SEVEN wins.

My personal favourite speech of the night was when she abruptly pulled a laser out of her ass while accepting the award for Best Dance. “I just want to get this thing out of my ass!” before promptly yanking it out. The award was presented by Charli xcx and Troye Sivan. Troye just sampled “Music” in his most recent single (she even quoted the song in her speech!) and Charli of course performed with M earlier in the evening. Like I said, Madge had her army of industry children with her in full force.

M also won the award for Artist of the Year presented by Emma Bunton of the Spice Girls. Fun fact: the last time a Spice Girl appeared on the VMAs it was in 1998 when Geri Halliwell presented the award for Video of the Year to… you guessed it, Madonna. Keeping up with her off the cuff improvised acceptance speeches, M used this moment to call out her former manager Freddy DeMann for saying her career was over after her first VMA performance in 1984, a time she points out that most of the crowd wasn’t alive yet to witness including Pink Pantheress whose sore loser facial expressions made noise online. Perk up girl, that’s the queen on stage. Every acceptance felt like a side conversation at a club with the older cool girl that tells you stories about when she was young. It’s in that same speech that she says how she spent the last year and a half finding herself and making the music she wants to make. The queen of pop still finding herself and still embarking on new creative journeys? That just goes to show you that our time as creatives is truly never finished no matter how many things we’ve accomplished or how much time has passed. These wins are also the first for Madonna since 1999 when she won for Best Video From a Film for “Beautiful Stranger”. I can’t believe it took 28 years for MTV to give her another trophy, so by all means, let mother tell her stories. She fought for years to get here.

More than anything, it was just very exciting to be watching an awards show when Madonna was at the centre of attention (no matter how hard Taylor Swift tried to change that, allegedly). Anyone who has been a fan of M knows that before the Celebration Tour a few years ago, it had been a bumpy couple of years in the media regarding her public image. This last album Confessions II has brought the focus back to her abilities as a musician and the trailblazing contributions she has made (and continues to make) to the dance communities and music videos.

 

Photo credits: Greg Allen/Backgrid

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