K-pop posts record album sales in first half of 2026
Around 49.5 million copies were sold in the first six months of the year, with 14 albums released before July selling more than 1 million copies each in their first week.
BTS performs on a stage in central Seoul on March 21.BIG HIT MUSIC/NETFLIX
K-pop album sales reached an all-time high in the first half of the year, with 49.5 million copies sold over six months, according to the music tracking platform Hanteo Chart on Wednesday.
The latest figure — which the platform calculated by combining real-time data from 5,000 music retailers worldwide — surpasses the previous record of 46.2 million copies sold, set in the first half of 2023. It also marks a 23.4 percent jump from the same period last year, when it logged 40.1 million albums.
“The K-pop industry has overcome structural and temporary slowdowns to build a long-lasting, stable ecosystem comprising a variety of artists,” Hanteo Chart said in a press release.
Album sales grew from 13.8 million copies in 2017 to 18.6 million in 2019. Following the Covid-19 pandemic, that number exponentially increasedto 103 million in 2023.
Despite K-pop’s momentum weakening in recent years, the market has maintained a size more than four times its prepandemic level, with 87 million albums sold in 2024 and 86.2 million last year.
Hanteo Chart attributed this year’s historic record to BTS’s return to the music scene with its fifth full-length album “Arirang” in late March. Approximately 4.16 million copies of “Arirang” were sold in the first week of its release.
Blackpink poses for a photo during an event in western Seoul in August 2024.NEWS1
Additionally, 14 albums released before July sold more than 1 million copies each in their first week for a combined 22.6 million copies, nearly matching the record set in the first half of 2023, when 12 albums that achieved the same first-week milestone sold a total 23.27 million copies.
The 2023 record was largely driven by boy bands Seventeen and Stray Kids, whose combined first-week sales record surpassed the 4-million benchmark.
The 14 groups that have sold more than a million copies within a week of their release so far are BTS, Blackpink, Ateez, Tomorrow x Together, Enhypen, Treasure, BoyNextDoor, Riize, &TEAM, TWS, Plave, NCT Wish, Cortis and Alpha Drive One.
Boy band Cortis performs during halftime in the NBA All-Star Celebrity Game in California on Feb. 13.AP/YONHAP
The yearly record is likely to reach new heights as well, according to Hanteo Chart. The second half of this year has already shown a more robust sales performance than that of each year from 2021 to 2025.
“The data from the first half of this year serves as proof that K-pop has settled as a core part of the global music market, not a temporary fad,” Kwak Young-ho, the CEO of Hanteo Global, said.
