BBMAs set for May 17, AMAs May 25

The music-awards calendar is getting crowded again — but not in the exact way that schedule screenshots have been suggesting. The solid date here is the 2026 American Music Awards: Monday, May 25, live from Las Vegas on CBS and Paramount+. But the other two pieces of the circulating claim don’t hold up. May 17 is the Academy of Country Music Awards, not the Billboard Music Awards, and Universal’s official Shrek 5 page lists June 30, 2027, not a May 2026 release. ### So what’s actually confirmed? The clearest confirmation is the AMAs. The show’s official site says the 52nd American Music Awards will air live on Memorial Day, Monday, May 25, 2026. Paramount’s press page adds the time — 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT — and confirms the venue as MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, with Queen Latifah hosting. ### Why is May 17 getting mixed up? Because May 17 is a real awards-show date — just for a different ceremony. Dick Clark Productions and Academy of Country Music materials say the 61st ACM Awards are set for Sunday, May 17, 2026, in Las Vegas, streaming on Prime Video. If someone saw “music awards,” “May 17,” and “DCP” in the same orbit, it would be easy to mislabel those shows with separate partners and audiences. ### What about the Billboard Music Awards? That’s the weak link in the viral version of the story. The BBMAs’ official site is live, and Dick Clark Productions still carries the show page, but the official pages surfaced in search do not show a confirmed May 17, 2026 ceremony date. What they do show supports “BBMAs exist” — not “BBMAs are set for May 17.” ### And the Shrek 5 date? That part is cleaner. Universal’s official movie page lists Shrek 5 “In Theaters June 30, 2027.” Universal’s broader upcoming-release slate also places its 2026 animated and family titles elsewhere, not on May 14, 2026. So the idea that a Shrek 5 opening is about to collide with late-May music TV doesn’t match the studio’s current schedule. ### Does the late-May promo squeeze still matter? Yes — just in a narrower way. The AMAs are locked to Memorial Day, which gives labels, artists, and TV bookers a real late-May tentpole. And the Billboard site is already filling with AMA-related coverage, including performer announcements, which tells you the promo machine is active now. ### Why does the distinction matter? Because these shows do different jobs. The AMAs are fan-voted and built for broad TV spectacle. The ACMs are country-specific and now live on a streaming platform. The BBMAs, when scheduled, are tied to chart performance. If you confuse one for another, you also confuse who is promoting, where the audience is, and what kind of campaign an artist would actually build. ### What should readers take from this? Basically — the AMAs date is real, the May 17 music-awards date belongs to the ACMs, and the Shrek 5 date in the circulating posts is outdated or wrong. So the real story is smaller but clearer: late May has one confirmed mainstream TV music tentpole, not the stacked entertainment traffic jam people were sharing.