![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/sm-entertainment.jpg\")
<\/p>\nIt\u2019s that time of year again! While December is filled with year-end countdowns, I like to take a look back at some of K-pop\u2019s biggest agencies during November. Before reading (especially if you\u2019re new to the blog), it\u2019s helpful to know that my grading focuses most heavily on music releases and how comebacks are managed and delivered to fans. Scandals and non-musical factors can certainly impact an agency\u2019s grade, but the biggest criteria will always be the music itself.<\/p>\n
As usual, the thoughts below are my own and aren\u2019t privy to any insider information. There will be plenty of subjective critique.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Good<\/p>\n
In some ways, SM Entertainment is too big to fail. Even if they don\u2019t really drive the entire industry the way they used to at their peak, they\u2019re still a staple of K-pop and home to some of the biggest artists around. Of these artists, aespa are still the most popular on the charts. They didn\u2019t make many comebacks this year, but both WDA<\/a> and Lemonade<\/a> were decent-level hits, though a bit short of aespa\u2019s past standards.<\/p>\n SM\u2019s biggest success in 2026 seems to be NCT Wish. Even though their music isn\u2019t always for me, I\u2019m continually surprised by just how large their fan base is. They routinely sell massive numbers of albums and SM knows this, giving them many comebacks in both Korea and Japan. Recently, they\u2019ve started charting digitally as well, suggesting a growing interest from the general public. While the NCT brand as a whole seems to have softened, Wish is still going strong.<\/p>\n SM\u2019s artistic output was varied this year (more on this later), but I\u2019d be remiss if I didn\u2019t mention SHINee\u2019s excellent mini album. It may not have set the charts on fire (few groups do at this stage in their career), but it let the guys do what they do best. SM has always managed their legacy artists fairly well and as a fan I was happy that the powers-that-be decided to make this comeback one dedicated to what most fans love about the group.<\/p>\n Thinking about newer generations of artists, Hearts2Hearts scored their most enduring hit yet with RUDE!<\/a>. Like so many others, I came around to this song as the months went on and it\u2019s still lingering on the charts today. This proves that the agency can still churn out a buzzy, culture-saturating hit when they want to.<\/p>\n Another standout artist has been XngHan&Xoul, whose work has actually felt more artistically aligned than the group he was once part of. SM has always succeeded when they pursue dance music, and I hope XngHan can continue to be a conduit for this in the future.<\/p>\n The Bad<\/p>\n Apart from the few mentions I made above, SM Entertainment ceded control of the digital charts to their competitors this year. They had few legitimately huge hits that stuck around in culture, and this is a problem for an agency that once led K-pop trends. SM\u2019s A&R seems to be all over the place these days, lacking the focus and vision they were once known for. Even their artists with a defined concept delivered watered down versions of this in 2026.<\/p>\n Then, there are groups like RIIZE. I don\u2019t think SM knows what they want RIIZE to be. A series of baffling, sonic grab bag singles this year painted them in all sorts of ways, trying to appeal to global ears but simply muddying the water instead. A group like this should be promoted with much more material than they have so far. Their catalog is woefully sparse compared to their same-aged peers and without sonic cohesion it\u2019s hard to build reliable excitement over a group that really deserves it. They\u2019ve released some of the best K-pop singles of the 2020s. I don\u2019t know what happened this year, but it was underwhelming to say the least.<\/p>\n While Hearts2Hearts scored a massive hit with RUDE!, SM doesn\u2019t seem to know what to do with them either. The group released a bunch of material this year but much of it flew under the radar. And with the emergence of Lee Sooman\u2019s A2O Lite, it feels like Hearts2Hearts might be forced to play second fiddle unless they clearly define their sound and find another mega-hit soon.<\/p>\n Speaking of Sooman\u2019s A2O enterprise, we\u2019ve got an interesting battle shaping up. So far, A2O feels like the classic SM playbook, while the actual SM is still trying to figure out what they are in 2026. What they\u2019ve been in 2026 is a grab bag of disparate sounds and styles \u2013 some of them successful, many of them not. There hasn\u2019t been much continuity between their releases, which pulls things dangerously close to \u201cgeneric\u201d territory. SM should operate as a high brand boutique, not a bargain pick and mix.<\/p>\n While I appreciate SM\u2019s continued loyalty to its legacy acts, most of its big 2026 reunions came and went without much fanfare. Both EXO and NCT 127 made long-awaited returns with a fraction of their line-ups and forgettable music that failed to make any notable impact. It was the same with Red Velvet, who have retained all their members but released a dud of an album compared to their artistic peak. Even aespa, who did pretty well on the charts this year, seemed to lose a bit of their influence on K-pop as a whole.<\/p>\n Then, there were the artist departures. BoA was the biggest artist to leave SM (after 25 years!). That\u2019s essentially the face of the company pulling away. NCT and its units also lost members, as Mark, Ten and WinWin departed the agency. Many of SM\u2019s artists remain active in their respective groups while pursuing solo careers under different management, but things certainly feel fractured in a way that they didn\u2019t before.<\/p>\n This time last year, I thought I\u2019d be writing about the debut of a new boy group in 2026. This group has been promised for well over a year now, even shooting their own reality series. The project has been repeatedly pushed back and won\u2019t likely occur before next spring. The way SM has treated RIIZE, I\u2019m not sure how excited we can be about a new group, but the agency definitely needs something buzzworthy to hang its hat on in 2027. Their 2026 felt kind of\u2026 boring?<\/p>\n What I\u2019d like to see in 2027:<\/p>\n A return to an agency-wide signature sound Previous years: 2025<\/a> \/\/ 2024<\/a> \/\/ 2023<\/a> \/\/ 2022<\/a> \/\/ 2021<\/a> \/\/ 2020<\/a> \/\/ 2019<\/a> \/\/ 2018<\/a> \/\/ 2017<\/a> \/\/ 2016<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s that time of year again! While December is filled with year-end countdowns, I like to take a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":678127,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[93,61,60,278],"class_list":["post-678126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=678126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/678127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=678126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=678126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=678126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe debut of a new group
\nA return to leading trends rather than following them
\nMore musical consistency from the agency\u2019s newer generation of artists (RIIZE, Hearts2Hearts)<\/p>\n