SEOUL, March 20 (Reuters) – Kpop superstar boyband BTS will embark on a world tour next month 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 on Saturday.
The Saturday concert will be streamed live by Netflix, the U.S. platform’s first global live broadcast of a music concert, adding to the anticipation of the seven-member group’s comeback.
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.
Below are some details of the BTS WORLD TOUR ARIRANG 2026-2027:
PERFORMING IN 34 CITIES
BTS will kick off the tour with a concert on April 9 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 U.S. 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 U.S. and Canada, before visiting Latin American countries, including Colombia, Peru, Chile, Argentina and Brazil.
In Southeast Asia, performances are scheduled in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines. The tour 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 ($1.8 billion), potentially approaching or overtaking past highest-grossing tours such as Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour of $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% of the top 100 world concert tours in 2025, up from 4% in 2019 when “Love Yourself” ranked the third by gross, according to Billboard.
FIFTH ALBUM ‘ARIRANG’
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,” the leader of BTS, RM, said in a speech he gave to an Asia-Pacific forum held last year in South Korea.
($1 = 1,502.8000 won)
(Reporting by Jihoon Lee; Editing by Kate Mayberry)
