Hits FM Music Awards: History, Categories & Yearly Winners Archive

The Hits FM Music Awards are Nepal's oldest continuously organised national music awards, presented by Hits FM 91.2, a private Kathmandu radio station (FM stands for Frequency Modulation) operated by Hits Nepal Pvt. Ltd. The first edition was held in 2054 BS (1997 AD), less than two years after the station itself went on air in 1996. Because they were the first musical honours staged by a private company at a national level, and because they aim to reward the year's best albums, songs and performances across pop, rock and folk, Nepali media quickly nicknamed them the 'Grammys of Nepal'.

Each edition honours recordings released during a single Nepali (Bikram Sambat) year and is usually staged near the end of that year, in the winter months of Magh-Falgun (January-February). Winners are chosen through a mix of jury evaluation and, in several categories, audience and industry input, and trophies are handed out at a televised ceremony that has become a fixture of the Nepali music calendar.

The awards sit within a wider family of Nepali music honours that later included the Image FM Music Awards, the Radio Kantipur National Music Awards and others, but the Hits FM Music Awards remain the reference point against which the rest are measured. For fans searching for a single, reliable Nepali music awards list, the Hits FM archive is the most complete long-running record of who won what, and when.

The inaugural ceremony in 2054 BS (1997) set the template: a black-tie evening celebrating the previous year's releases, capped by a Lifetime Achievement Award for a veteran of Nepali music. Folk legend Dharma Raj Thapa received that first lifetime honour. The event grew rapidly in scale, moving between major Kathmandu venues over the years, including the Birendra International Convention Centre (BICC), the Nepal Army Officers' Club (from 2008), and later halls such as the Nepal Academy (Pragya Pratishthan) auditorium in Kamaladi, where the 2020 ceremony was held.

Edition numbering follows a simple rule that makes the archive easy to navigate: the Nth ceremony corresponds to Nepali year 2053 + N BS. So the 1st edition was 2054 BS, the 21st edition was 2074 BS (held early 2018), and the 23rd edition honoured the 2076 BS season and was staged in January 2020. Several editions also carried a title sponsor, and the awards were branded the 'Close-up Hits FM Music Awards' in the early 2000s.

The most comprehensively documented recent edition is the 23rd (2076 BS, January 2020). After that ceremony the awards were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and no later edition has been widely and reliably documented in national media at the time of writing. Readers looking for a specific recent year should confirm against the official Hits FM website, because scheduling has been irregular since 2020.

The Hits FM Music Awards began modestly with just seven categories and expanded steadily as Nepal's recording industry diversified across pop, rock and folk. The growth reflects real changes in the market: dedicated pop vocal categories arrived as pop dominated the 1990s and 2000s, folk categories were added as lok-dohori surged, and film-song and rock categories followed the rise of movie soundtracks and band culture.

By the mid-2000s the ceremony had grown to around 18-19 categories, its widest span. Later editions trimmed and consolidated the list, so recent ceremonies have typically featured about 16-17 competitive categories plus the Lifetime Achievement Award. The core 'big three' honours, Album of the Year, Song of the Year and Record of the Year, have been present in some form throughout.

Because the roster has shifted over the years, no single edition has featured every category at once. The list below gathers the categories that have appeared across the awards' history, which is useful for understanding search terms such as 'hits fm best song of the year' or 'folk record of the year' and for matching a winner to the exact prize they received.

The 21st Hits FM Music Awards honoured releases of 2074 BS (roughly 2017 AD) and was one of the last fully documented editions before the pandemic. The soundtrack single 'Saili', composed by Kali Prasad Baskota and sung by Hemant Rana, dominated the technical prizes, while veteran band 1974 AD took Album of the Year for 'Hazaar Sapana' and singer-songwriter Bartika Eam Rai swept Song of the Year for 'Khai'. The complete list below is a useful anchor for anyone searching 'hits fm music awards 2074 winners'.

The 23rd ceremony, held at the Nepal Academy hall in Kamaladi in January 2020, was the last major pre-pandemic edition and one of the most reported. Sabin Rai and The Pharaoh were the night's big winners, sweeping three rock-oriented prizes, while Sunita Karki's 'Sunmala' took Album of the Year and Bartika Eam Rai won Song of the Year again for 'Aashaa II'. Veteran singer Gyanu Rana received the Lifetime Achievement Award.

This edition featured about 16 competitive categories, spanning pop, rock, folk and film music, and drew widely on jury and audience input. It remains the most recent Hits FM Music Awards ceremony with a fully published, media-verified winners list.

The Lifetime Achievement Award is the ceremony's most prestigious, non-competitive honour, given each year to an artist who has shaped Nepali music over a lifetime. The unbroken run below, from the first recipient in 2054 BS to the 2074 BS edition, doubles as a roll call of Nepal's musical heritage, spanning folk pioneers, classical vocalists, composers and lyricists.

Some of the sharpest memories from the archive come from clean sweeps. At the 2059 BS (2002) 'Close-up Hits FM Music Awards', singer Kunti Moktan swept Best Female Vocal Performance, Record of the Year and Album of the Year in a single night, while newcomer Sugam Pokharel won Best New Artist and Nima Rumba took Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. The band 1974 AD, a fixture of the awards, won Best Performance by a Group or Duo with Vocal that same year and later returned for Album of the Year with 'Hazaar Sapana' in 2074 BS.

The awards have tracked the evolution of Nepali popular music itself, from the pop era of Nabin K Bhattarai, Nima Rumba and Prashna Shakya, through the band boom led by 1974 AD and Robin and the New Revolution, to the singer-songwriter wave represented by Bartika Eam Rai and the film-song strength of composers like Kali Prasad Baskota. Names such as Bartika Eam Rai, Hemant Rana, Shiva Pariyar and Deep Shrestha recur across multiple editions, marking them among the most decorated performers in the archive.

For readers building a broader Nepali music awards picture, the Hits FM roster is best read alongside its peers, notably the Image FM Music Awards and, more recently, the Radio Kantipur National Music Awards, which together cover the same industry from different angles and occasionally recognise the same landmark albums and songs.