The 2023 MAMA Awards, one of the biggest end-of-the-year Korean music awards shows, is set to be held on November 28 and 29 at the Tokyo Dome in Japan.

However, while there have been some exciting announcements regarding artists that will be performing at the event, this year’s show has already faced scrutiny over alleged nomination snubs that fans claim to be rigged.

Artists such as ATEEZ, ENHYPEN, ITZY, and NMIXX received few to no nominations between them, despite the major impact all of them have had on K-Pop in the last year.

ATEEZ | KQ Entertainment

And now, another announcement made regarding the 2023 MAMA Awards has many K-Pop fans disappointed and uncertain as to what the performances for the event will look like.

Oftentimes at the MAMA Awards, there will be some kind of collaboration stage between artists from different groups. For example, at last year’s show, a huge collab between some major rookie girl groups was performed and received a lot of hype.

One of the less-popular collab stages was the opening performance for the 2021 MAMA Awards. While it featured talented idols from several popular groups, many fans felt like it would have been better to see all of them on stage at once, rather than performing one by one.

And that’s what many are afraid will happen at this year’s collab stage. The “Super Stage” will feature Minnie from (G)I-DLE, Yunjin from LE SSERAFIM, and Xiaoting from Kep1er, along with choreographers Bada Lee and Monika.

Of course, these are all very talented women — especially when it comes to dancing — but many fans find it to be an odd group to have perform together. Some also think that it’s disappointing that other currently popular girl groups like IVE, aespa, and NewJeans weren’t included.

Here’s what netizens had to say on a forum post about this announcement.

We’ll just have to wait and see what this talented group of women have in store, and hopefully it’ll be something they all perform together rather than individually!

 “A ‘collab’ and it’ll just be them dancing solo one by one.”