It is with immeasurable sorrow that the MOBO Organisation announces the passing of its Founder and CEO, Kanya King CBE.
Kanya passed away peacefully on 3rd June 2026 after a courageous and characteristically determined battle with colon cancer. She was surrounded by her family, close friends and love. The music world has lost one of its most fearless champions.
Thirty years ago, Kanya King remortgaged her home, alone, without institutional backing, without industry support, to build a stage that would transform British music forever.
She was a single mother from a council estate in London’s Kilburn who was told that Black music was too niche, that there was no market and that the industry was not interested. Instead of arguing, she built. Six weeks later, the first MOBO Awards was broadcast to the nation.
What Kanya created was never simply an awards ceremony. It was an act of cultural justice. MOBO did not just celebrate Black music; it legitimised it, amplified it, and demonstrated its commercial and creative power to a world that had too often chosen not to see it.
Olivia Dean, Stormzy, Little Simz, RAYE, Craig David, Soul II Soul, Ms. Dynamite, So Solid Crew, Krept & Konan, Kano, Amy Winehouse, Sade, Central Cee and more. Every artist who has stood on the MOBO stage since 1996, every door that opened, every opportunity that followed, and every ceiling that was shattered carries the imprint of Kanya King’s vision.
She built a platform that has reached hundreds of millions of people around the world. She was awarded a CBE and received an Ivors Academy Honour in 2025, accepting it, characteristically, in the middle of what she described as “a difficult week health-wise”, yet still managing to inspire every person in the room. She never stopped. She never asked for permission. She never accepted that the word “no” was final.
When she stood on the MOBO stage in Newcastle in February 2025, just months after her diagnosis, she told the audience: “I never allowed someone to define my limits. Not in life. Not in business. And I’m certainly not going to have that happen now.” That was Kanya King. Right to the very end.
The 2026 MOBO Awards, held during the Organisation’s landmark 30th anniversary year, will be dedicated entirely to her memory. Every artist, every moment and every note will carry her legacy.
The world was a profoundly better place with Kanya King in it. The MOBO family is heartbroken, but also endlessly grateful, proud and inspired by everything she gave to music, culture and the generations who will follow in her footsteps.
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