The real and best K-pop is back: BTS confirms return as a full group with new album due in 2026
After an enforced hiatus, K-pop band BTS has officially reunited - in the same week it relinquished a chart record to a fictional band.
Superstar South Korean boy band BTS has announced its comeback after a lengthy hiatus, with a new album and a global concert tour in the works.
The K-pop group’s seven members - Jin, Jimin, J-Hope, Jung Kook, RM, Suga and V - revealed the news this week in a Weverse live stream.
“A group album will be released next spring,” BTS said, according to quotes shared by its record label BigHit Music. “We will start preparing together starting in July.”
The band added: “We are also planning a world tour with the new album. We will visit various places around the world, so please look forward to it.”
[기사] #방탄소년단, 2026년 봄날 완전체 컴백 정식 공표…신보·월드투어 예고https://t.co/m3yXdGE2fc
— BIGHIT MUSIC (@BIGHIT_MUSIC) July 1, 2025
BTS success halted by military service
A group that formed in 2013, BTS is the best-selling band in South Korean history, having sold a reported 846 million units worldwide. BTS has had six No. 1 singles in the U.S.’s Billboard Hot 100 chart, and in 2021 became the first South Korean group to be nominated for a Grammy Award.
In June 2022, however, BTS announced a pause in its activities to allow its members to complete a mandatory period of national service. Under South Korean law, able-bodied men between the ages of 18 and 35 typically have to go through 18 to 21 months of military training.
Three years on, BigHit confirmed last month that Suga had been discharged from the military - meaning all seven BTS members have now completed their period of service. Jimin, June Kook, RM and V had all been discharged a week earlier.
Five years since last studio album
Having now reunited, the band is preparing to release its 10th studio album, and the first since 2020’s Be. BTS’s most recent tour, “Permission to Dance on Stage”, concluded in April 2022.
And in its enforced absence, BTS has relinquished a major K-pop chart record - to a fictional band.
Netflix soundtrack outstrips BTS hit
The track “Your Idol”, sung by the animated pop group The Saja Boys in the new Netflix fantasy film KPop Demon Hunters, this week reached No. 2 in Spotify’s global chart.
Per The Hollywood Reporter, that makes The Saja Boys the highest-charting K-pop band in the history of the music streaming platform, surpassing BTS’s 2020 single “Dynamite”, which got to No. 3.
NME notes, however, that BTS’s members appear unfazed by the competition posed by the fictional group. During their live stream this week, they could be heard singing the words to another Saja Boys track, “Soda Pop”.
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