K-POP Sets New Pace for 2025 Tour Market... STRAY KIDS Lead, SEVENTEEN and j-hope Follow

K-POP’s presence in the global tour market expanded to an all-time high in 2025. According to Billboard’s year-end box score chart, K-POP accounted for 7.7% of the top 100 tour performances this year, marking a significant rise from 5.1% in 2023 and 4% in 2019. Notably, while only BTS ranked third among all genres in 2019, eight groups made it into the top 100 this year despite BTS’s absence—double the number from four groups the previous year. This figure illustrates just how much the K-POP tour market has expanded. The highest-grossing K-POP tour of 2025 was STRAY KIDS’ “Dominate World Tour,” which generated $185.7 million through 31 performances across Asia, Europe, North America, and South America, selling 1.3 million tickets. Following closely were SEVENTEEN’s “Right Here World Tour” with $142.4 million (964,000 tickets over 34 shows) and j-hope’s “Hope on the Stage Tour” with $79.9 million (504,000 tickets over 33 shows), ranking second and third respectively. The solo activities of BTS members also drew attention, as both j-hope and Jin entered the top 10 through their individual headline tours. Jin’s “#RUNSEOKJIN_EP.TOUR” earned $46.1 million and ranked seventh, while j-hope achieved an outstanding result by placing third. Legendary G-Dragon also made it into the top 10 with his “Übermensch World Tour,” generating $27.1 million from just 9 performances and finishing in ninth place. Although idol groups still dominate the K-POP tour market, soloists are showing strong progress as well. Three soloists were included in this year’s top 10, two of whom are BTS members, proving the individual recognition of group members. The entry threshold for the bottom half of the top 10 also tripled from $6 million the previous year to $18 million this year, demonstrating the rapid growth in the scale and value of K-POP tours overall.