BTS ready to return

After completing their military service, which is mandatory in South Korea, K-pop champions BTS are preparing to release their first new album in six years. The as-yet-untitled LP will be released March 20 via Big Hit Entertainment. It is their fifth studio album and follows 2020’s “Be”. Furthermore, BTS are also preparing a world tour in 2026, already announced but with further details coming soon.

BTS entered the recording studio last July to work on their new LP. “We are approaching the album with the same mentality we had when we started,” the group said in a statement last year. «We are also planning a world tour together with the new album. We’ll be meeting fans all over the world, so we hope you’re as excited as we are.”

After record label Big Hit Music announced in late 2021 that BTS was preparing to take an “official extended period of rest,” the K-pop group released its first anthology album, “Proof,” the following June. In the years that followed, each member embarked on their own solo project, including J-Hope’s 2022 album “Jack in the Box,” RM’s 2022 album “Indigo,” and Jimin’s 2023 album “Face.”

The tour will be BTS’s world first in about four years, since the conclusion of “BTS permission to dance on stage” in 2022.

During this period various members were also busy on screen. Jimin and Jung Kook appeared on the Disney+ travel series “Are You Sure?!,” Jin shared a concert film about his debut solo tour, and RM was the subject of a 2024 documentary about the making of his second solo album.