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\u00a0– First-half sales of 49.53 million copies \u2014 a “half-year record”\u2026 14 million-seller acts- Major IPs including BTS and BLACKPINK make back-to-back first-half comebacks- Will it set an annual record? Second-half results also eagerly awaited<\/p>\n
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Predictions that the growth of the K-pop album market \u2014 driven upward by the pandemic \u2014 would cool off with the shift to the endemic era have been proven wrong. K-pop album sales in the first half of 2026 have instead broken the all-time record for a half-year period.<\/p>\n
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Hanteo Global, which publishes the Hanteo Chart, released its “Hanteo Rewind \u2014 2026 First-Half Review” data report on the 16th. Of the report’s four chapters, Chapter 1, “The Return of the K-Pop Kings,” examines K-pop artists’ first-half album sales and rankings.<\/p>\n
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According to Hanteo Rewind, total K-pop album sales from January to June 2026 reached 49.53 million copies. That figure surpasses the previous half-year high set in the first half of 2023 (46.17 million copies). Over the same period, 14 acts became “million-sellers,” each surpassing 1 million copies in total sales.<\/p>\n
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The prevailing expectation had been that, as offline concerts and fan meetings returned to normal, fans’ spending would spread from albums to live events, leading sales to level off. The first-half results, however, pointed in exactly the opposite direction.<\/p>\n
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\u25ba Back-to-back comebacks from major IPs including BTS and BLACKPINK<\/p>\n
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The primary engine behind the record was the return of the so-called “K-pop monarchs.” BTS and BLACKPINK, both back at full strength after a hiatus that included military service, made comebacks within the same half-year, raising the scale of the K-pop market.<\/p>\n
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The top seller was BTS’s fifth studio album “ARIRANG” (March), with 4,713,213 copies. It was followed by ATEEZ’s “GOLDEN HOUR” Part.4 and Part.5 combined at 3,037,492 copies, and rookie group CORTIS’s “GREENGREEN” in third at 2,800,567 copies.<\/p>\n
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Other major IPs also delivered formidable numbers. NCT WISH’s “Ode to Love” sold 1,910,316 copies and TOMORROW X TOGETHER’s “7TH YEAR: When the Wind Briefly Paused in the Thornbush” sold 1,880,135 copies, while BLACKPINK’s “DEADLINE” recorded 1,804,472 copies and ALPHA DRIVE ONE’s “EUPHORIA” 1,469,637 copies. PLAVE also posted a dazzling result with 1,298,861 copies for “Caligo Pt.2.”<\/p>\n
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\u25ba The “speed of mobilization” revealed by first-week sales<\/p>\n
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“First-week sales” (chodong) \u2014 the number of copies sold in the week of release \u2014 is the indicator that most clearly reveals a fandom’s firepower. Of the 4,169,464 first-week copies of BTS’s “ARIRANG,” about 95.5% were concentrated on the release day alone. It is a figure that goes beyond simple sales to show just how quickly a fandom can rally.<\/p>\n
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BLACKPINK’s five-track project “DEADLINE” (February) set a new girl-group first-week record with 1,774,577 copies. Despite being a project release rather than a full studio album, it sold 1.46 million copies on the first day alone. In addition, CORTIS (2.31 million), ENHYPEN (2.07 million), NCT WISH (1.82 million) and TOMORROW X TOGETHER (1.80 million) all surpassed 1 million in first-week sales, showing that the “multi-million first week” is no longer the record of just a handful of acts.<\/p>\n
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\u25ba Rookies, virtual and mid-tier acts go million too\u2026 a thicker “core”<\/p>\n
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What stands out in these results is not the top tier but the middle. Early-career rookie group CORTIS ranked third with 2.8 million copies, and virtual idol group PLAVE, rookie group ALPHA DRIVE ONE (“EUPHORIA”), and TWS (“NO TRAGEDY”) all made the million-seller list.<\/p>\n
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This is read as a sign that new names are rapidly entering a market that had hardened around major IPs \u2014 evidence that the strength lies across the market as a whole, rather than a fleeting boom confined to specific acts.<\/p>\n
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\u25ba “Establishing itself as the standard, not a special case”<\/p>\n
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Within the music industry, this first-half record is seen as evidence that the album-purchasing structure formed during the pandemic has settled in as a “standard.” Collection- and keepsake-oriented buying practices \u2014 member-by-member and version-by-version editions, photocards and purchase benefits (POB) \u2014 have persisted beyond the endemic transition, so that concerts and albums are consumed together rather than as separate categories.<\/p>\n
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On top of that, some observers note that the very scale of first-week sales has grown structurally, as global fandoms across North America, Japan and Southeast Asia now rally simultaneously at the moment of release.<\/p>\n
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Meanwhile, the report is part of Hanteo Chart’s data-report series, “Hanteo Rewind \u2014 2026 First Half, Revival.” Following the album sales mainly covered in Chapter 1, subsequent chapters address digital chart performance and reverse-run hits (yeokjuhaeng), as well as the resurgence of reunited artists, in turn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0– First-half sales of 49.53 million copies \u2014 a “half-year record”\u2026 14 million-seller acts- Major IPs including BTS…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88409,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17937,11095,195],"class_list":["post-88408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-korea","tag-focus","tag-hanteo-news","tag-k-pop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}