SEOUL, South Korea — K-pop megastars BTS will release a new album in March ahead of a world tour, the group announced on Thursday.<\/p>\n
South Korea\u2019s biggest musical act has been on self-described hiatus since 2022 as its members undertook national military service required of all men under the age of 30.<\/p>\n
All seven members were discharged last year, and the group announced a comeback for the spring of 2026.<\/p>\n
They confirmed on Thursday that they would release an album on March 20 before heading on tour.<\/p>\n
The exact date was revealed in handwritten letters sent to paid members of the official BTS fan group, and later confirmed by their label Big Hit Music.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have been waiting more earnestly than anyone else,\u201d group leader RM wrote in the letter.<\/p>\n
No further details about the album or tour were given.<\/p>\n
The album will be BTS\u2019s first since the anthology \u201cProof\u201d which became South Korea\u2019s bestselling record of 2022.<\/p>\n
Before their military service, BTS generated more than 5.5 trillion won (US$3.8 billion) in South Korea per year, according to the government-backed Korea Culture and Tourism Institute.<\/p>\n
The figure is equivalent to roughly 0.2 per cent of the country\u2019s total GDP.<\/p>\n
BTS has expanded beyond their home nation to become a global musical phenomenon in recent years.<\/p>\n
They hold the record as the most-streamed group on Spotify, and became the first K-pop act to top both the Billboard 200 and the Billboard Artist 100 charts in the United States.<\/p>\n
AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SEOUL, South Korea — K-pop megastars BTS will release a new album in March ahead of a world…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383199,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[712,49,48,75,341],"class_list":{"0":"post-383198","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-apple-news","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}