South Korea’s K-pop supergroup BTS launched its global concert tour on Thursday with the first of three shows at Goyang Stadium near Seoul.
The tour will visit 34 cities worldwide, setting a new record for the most tour dates by a K-pop artist. Tickets for concerts in South Korea, North America and Europe sold out within hours, the group’s management said. Fans wearing purple—the color associated with BTS’s fanbase, the ARMY—began arriving in the rain at Goyang Stadium hours before the show.
Back after 4 years
Members RM, Jin, Suga, j-hope, Jimin, V and Jung Kook are returning to the stage after a nearly four-year hiatus during which they completed South Korea’s mandatory military service. They reunited in 2025 to record their fifth studio album, Arirang, named after the centuries-old folk song popular in both North and South Korea.
Released in March, the album topped the Billboard 200 chart for two weeks—the first time a K-pop group or artist has done so. Its lead single, “Swim,” debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100. The tour’s setlists will draw from BTS’s back catalog as well as the new album. Last month the band marked their comeback with a free concert in Seoul.
BTS—short for Bangtan Sonyeondan, or “Bulletproof Boy Scouts”—debuted in June 2013 with the hip-hop–heavy album 2 Cool 4 Skool and rose to greater prominence with their 2016 release Wings.
This is the group’s first headline tour since the 2021–22 Permission to Dance on Stage run. After Goyang, the tour moves to Tokyo and will continue through North America, Europe, South America and Asia, then to Australia in early 2027, with a final stop scheduled for Manila next March.
Analysts have estimated total tour earnings could reach as much as $1.81 billion (€1.5 billion).
Edited by: Elizabeth Schumacher