The annual Melon Music Awards are usually held at the end of each year, but that hasn’t stopped a number of big name artists from landing some early nominations at this year’s event!

Nominations for the Top 10 Artists Bonsang Award are open and a number of big name artists have already been nominated, such as BIGBANG, BTS, IU, Ailee, Akdong Musician, HIGHLIGHT (aka The Artist Formerly Known as BEAST), TWICE, Bolbbalgan4, SISTAR‘s Soyou, EXO‘s Chanyeol, Zion.T, and Crush.

In order to be nominated in this category, each artist is required to either achieve 600+ cumulative weekly popularity points, or to have won a weekly People’s Choice Award on Melon 5 times.

While those aforementioned artists have already scored their place in the nominee pool, there are many more groups that are very close to scoring nominations, meaning that it is going to be a tight battle for the final top 10 placings when the 2017 Melon Music Awards arrive at the end of the year!

Congrats to those who have scored these early Melon Music Award nominations!