Tate McRae's 2025 VMA Performance Earns an Emmy Nomination

One of Tate McRae's performances is officially Emmy-nominated.

Yesterday (July 8), the nominations for the 2026 Emmy Awards were unveiled, and Tate McRae's 2025 VMA performance secured a nod for outstanding choreography for variety or reality programming. Choreographed by Robbie Blue, the highly athletic performance was a medley of her hit singles "Sports Car" and "Revolving Door," with several acrobatic sections performed from within a sand pit.

It's a major feat for the Calgary pop star and her dancers, as it becomes the second-ever VMA performance to be recognized at the Emmys, second to Michael Jackson's iconic medley at the 1995 VMAs, which earned a Primetime Emmy nomination in the same category in 1996.

McRae's performance is nominated alongside Bad Bunny's blockbuster Super Bowl Halftime Show performance, the Wicked: One Wonderful Night televised special starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, the 2026 Oscars and RuPaul's Drag Race.

It's the latest accolade in a very successful run for her third album So Close to What, which topped the Billboard Canadian Albums chart and Billboard 200 and helped her dominate the charts throughout the year. She was the top charting Canadian artist of 2025. and "Sports car" was an inescapable radio hit, reaching No. 9 on the Billboard Canadian Hot 100 and cracking the top 15 on the Year-End Billboard Canadian Hot 100 Songs chart for 2025. Earlier this year, she was honoured with the Hitmaker Award at Billboard Women In Music 2026 in Los Angeles.

Her choreographer Robbie Blue, to whom the nomination is credited, celebrated the feat in an Instagram post. "This is unreal!!!," he exclaimed. "A massive thank you to my team, the cast, the creative department and everybody that made this happen! We did it!!!"

The 26-year-old choreographer notably choreographed Katseye's viral Gap commercial last year, as well as Doechii's star-making performance at the 2025 Grammy Awards, which was his first professional gig and his biggest stage yet, at the time of the performance.

"I think the artists that seek me out are mostly artists that are willing to push themselves and really want to dance and love to dance. For me, the perfect artist is a Doechii, it’s Twigs, it’s Tinashe, it’s Tate [McRae], it’s somebody who really is willing to get in a studio and work really hard," he told Billboard in an interview about the Grammy performance.

Check out Tate McRae's full 2025 VMA performance below.