The 26th Golden Disc Awards took place on January 11–12, 2012, at the Kyocera Dome in Osaka, Japan. It honored the best in South Korean music released from January 1, 2011, through November 30, 2011. The event was held outside South Korea for the first time in the ceremony's history since its founding in 1986, as well as the first time at the beginning of the following year instead of December. Leeteuk, Park Gyu-ri, Lee Hong-gi, and Bae Suzy served as the hosts for the event.
The winners of the digital music and album categories were determined by music sales (80%) and a panel of music experts (20%). The Rookie Artist of the Year award was based on album sales (80%), a panel of music experts (10%) and online votes (10%), while the Popularity Award was based on online votes (80%) and album sales (20%).
The event was met with several controversies.[3] The absences of popular artist such as 2NE1, Big Bang, IU, and T-ara, with none of them receiving any awards despite their successes during the year led to criticisms over fairness.[3][4] The ceremony was broadcast through JTBC's Lunar New Year special instead of being broadcast live, which drew accusations of the awards being a "JTBC promotional concert" in an attempt to boost the channel's ratings.[3] The ceremony also drew small controversy for being held abroad, with observers commenting that they did not see how Japan was relevant to the awards when sales figures were calculated from South Korea only. Others pointed out that although the Mnet Asian Music Awards is also a South Korean ceremony that have been held abroad, it had various participants from multiple countries around the world unlike the Golden Disc Awards, where only Korean artists participated.[4]
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