BTS to visit 34 cities in a year for comeback world tour
The Kpop group’s new album tops the Billboard 200 chart for two weeks in a row
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[SEOUL] Kpop superstar boyband BTS embarks on a world tour on Thursday (Apr 9) to showcase new album Arirang, after marking the end of a more than three-year hiatus for military service with a concert at Seoul’s historic Gwanghwamun Square last month.
The seven-member group’s comeback album topped the Billboard 200 chart for two weeks in a row, a new record for a Kpop act, and generated 99.1 million on-demand official streams of the album’s songs in the US alone in the first week of its release, according to Billboard.
Some analysts say the tour’s ticket earnings alone could approach or overtake past highest-grossing tours such as Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres World Tour and the economic ripple effect could be even greater.
82 concerts
BTS will kick off the tour with a concert on Apr 9, 11 and 12 in the South Korean city of Goyang before visiting 33 more cities around the world for a total of 82 concerts lasting into March 2027.
After the first leg of concerts in South Korea and Japan in April, BTS will travel to the US and Mexico, and then to Europe to visit Belgium, Britain, Germany and France.
The group will visit North America again in the second half of this year for more concerts in the US and Canada, before visiting Latin American countries, including Colombia, Peru, Chile, Argentina and Brazil.
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In South-east Asia, performances are scheduled in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. The group will perform four shows in Singapore in December.
The tour also includes Taiwan and Hong Kong, but no concert is planned in mainland China. The group will also perform in Australia.
Sold out
Tickets for the concerts in South Korea sold out quickly during January’s presale, snapped up by the band’s fanbase known as “Army”.
The North American and European legs also sold out within a few hours of sales, according to Hybe, the agency that manages BTS.
In January, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum sent a letter to South Korean President Lee Jae-myung to ask BTS to put on more concerts in the Latin American country.
Biggest Kpop tour
The upcoming tour will mark the biggest world tour by a Kpop band with the most tour dates and the broadest regional reach, according to Hybe.
Kim Yu-hyuk of IBK Investment & Securities in Seoul forecasts revenue from the tour of 2.7 trillion won (S$2.3 billion), potentially approaching or overtaking past highest-grossing tours such as Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour of US$2.1 billion.
BTS’ last world tour was from August 2018 to April 2019, titled Love Yourself, with 42 concerts in 20 cities, followed by 20 stadium concerts in 10 cities.
Kpop represented 7.7 per cent of the top 100 world concert tours in 2025, up from 4 per cent in 2019 when Love Yourself ranked third by gross, according to billboard.
The new album Arirang is the fifth regular album for the seven-member group and has 14 tracks, including the title SWIM.
Arirang is named after a Korean folk song of the same name, capturing the identity of BTS as a group that began in Korea, according to Big Hit Music, a music label run by Hybe.
“Kpop’s success came from respecting diversity and embracing world cultures, but still holding on to Korea’s unique identity,” said BTS leader RM in a speech he gave to an Asia-Pacific forum held last year in South Korea. REUTERS
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