It’s 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’s biggest agencies during November. Before reading (especially if you’re new to the blog), it’s 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’s grade, but the biggest criteria will always be the music itself. Following SM Entertainment‘s analysis, it’s time to dive into HYBE Corporation.

As usual, the thoughts below are my own and aren’t privy to any insider information. There will be plenty of subjective critique. 

The Good

Because they’re such a big conglomeration of companies, HYBE’s fortunes really depend on which subsidiary you’re looking at. My favorite K-pop group of the moment, TWS, exists within Pledis Entertainment and although I’m not sure their 2026 output quite matched 2025 and 2024, they remain one of the most consistently great acts in K-pop and seem to have a behind-the-scenes team that know what they’re doing when it comes to song selection and general artistic direction. It’s been nice seeing the members get a chance to become more active in songwriting this year. 2026 also marked their first million-selling album with the spring’s No Tragedy mini.

Elsewhere in Pledis, the agency has done all they can really do with a fragmented Seventeen. As members enlist and go on hiatus, it’s been a smart idea to divide them into duos for continued promotion. While the music hasn’t exactly been spectacular across the board, I appreciate how each unit has been allowed to present their own specific sound. The V8 unit wins my vote this year.

Another HYBE subsidiary that’s had a pretty solid 2026 is KOZ Entertainment with BOYNEXTDOOR. The group has promoted quite a bit of material this year, most of it connected to their first full album Home. They may not have matched the commercial ubiquity of last year’s If I Say, I Love You, but the material has been pretty strong overall.

Whether you appreciate HYBE’s gimmick-heavy approach to their girl groups or not (more on that later), you can’t deny their commercial success. ILLIT had a highly successful year on the charts with their meme-ready material while LE SSERAFIM and Katseye’s fortunes were more mixed.

When speaking of HYBE in 2026, we can’t avoid talking about BTS’s big comeback. This was *the* event looming on the horizon as we approached the new year and it didn’t disappoint – commercially, at least. There’s simply no other act at the moment that can command the sales that BTS do. For many, they are still the face of K-pop.

Cortis debuted last year with a bang, but 2026 was the year they really exploded. REDRED quickly became one of the year’s most representative tracks and their album sales are absolutely insane for a rookie. TXT and ENHYPEN have also become sales monsters, routinely approaching (or passing) two million copies sold for new material. That’s pretty astonishing, and a testament to a loyal (and growing) fan base. And speaking of ENHYPEN, Heeseung’s departure and solo debut under the stage name “Evan” didn’t seem to dent the group’s fortunes too much and resulting in some solid music from Evan as well.

Joining the list of reliable million-sellers is &TEAM, who have gradually grown into commercial powerhouses as well – even when the quality of their music dips. Both their Japanese and Korean comebacks sold over a million copies this year.

Finally, we can count HYBE Latin America’s Santos Bravos a success as well. Not only has their music been great so far, but they seem to be cultivating a global fan base in the way these international/localized groups from K-pop agencies were always designed to do. Their future seems promising.

The Bad

Honestly, my gripes with HYBE this year have little to do with commercial fortunes. They remain dominant in the marketplace, so they’re clearly doing something right. However, there are some company-wide issues I have with their musical approach at the moment.

I’ll divide this into two parts.

Short song lengths: Even as other agencies begin to return to fuller song structures, HYBE remain stubbornly devoted to ultra-short singles, often missing key components like a bridge or final chorus. They are the leaders of this trend, and it’s an awful one. I don’t know what has so fully convinced them that this is the way forward, but I don’t think commercial results bear out this strategy and it’s certainly not a creatively satisfying one. The overwhelming sentiment (at least online) is that fans dislike this focus on brevity.

Gimmicks: This is more of a concern with HYBE’s girl groups, as all three of their established female acts have leaned heavily into elements of novelty for their 2026 work (they even joined forces for the worst of the worst). Whether it’s the Macarena sample in Boompala, the incessant whistling in You’re Under Arrest or the brainrot lyricism of Katseye’s work, it has often felt that HYBE is in the business of releasing memes rather than music. I need this trend to collapse, or at least be paired with more striking songwriting.

Speaking of Katseye, this once-promising group had a very rocky 2026. Members keep leaving or getting injured and the same critics that once praised Gnarly have turned on the group’s sonic identity. It just doesn’t feel like this project was built to last and I struggle to see an optimistic path ahead of them.

Though LE SSERAFIM remain near the top of the K-pop girl group pack, their 2026 saw a noticeable slip in both sales and general cultural ubiquity. I’m not really worried for them, but after last year’s big success of Spaghetti, they seem to have hit a commercial (and creative) snag. We’ll see if 2027 can reverse this slide. They certainly need better material.

While many/most of the company’s boy groups retained their strong sales presence in 2026, there was a noticeable quality dip in their discographies. &TEAM drifted from the sounds that made their discography so elite. TXT continue to be marred by overly short, underdeveloped music. ENHYPEN seem more indebted to trends than their own artistic vision. And Cortis? Yes, they’re mega-successful, but apart from REDRED their discography has been very polarizing and their second EP lacked the brazen excitement of their debut.

Most HYBE groups make big debuts and only grow from there, but Japanese act aoen feel like they’re flying under the radar. Perhaps this is due to their specific marketing toward the Japanese market, but even there it doesn’t seem that they’re making waves in the same way that their seniors &TEAM did. Their music has been all over the place and promotion has been much more limited than other acts within the agency. I wonder what HYBE’s plans are for them, because right now their career feels like an afterthought within the company.

Though it’s hard to deny BTS’s commercial dominance, their return hasn’t felt like the earth-shattering cultural event many expected. Much of the impact seems to be siloed to their (very sizable) fan base. Yes, Swim was technically a huge number one hit, but why doesn’t it feel like it? When we think back to 2026, will Swim be a representative song of the year? I highly doubt it, as its appeal just didn’t spread far beyond listeners who were already going to love anything the group released. Because of this, I’ll take the unpopular stance that BTS’s Arirang era was successful commercially but not culturally in the way much of their past work has been. For the project to be an inarguable “winner,” it really needed to hit both marks, so the end result is underwhelming by their admittedly high standards.

HYBE also established a new subsidiary this year focused solely on girl groups. The jury is still out on how ABD will fare in the future, but it seems to be the consensus opinion that new group Tuide’s debut was not the big event it needed to be. The group still has a long road ahead of them and many chances to right this ship, but I think HYBE learned that audiences are finally tired of the same sonic and conceptual template being regurgitated for so many modern girl group efforts. They (and other agencies) can’t replicate NewJeans’ appeal forever.

Oh yeah… and then there’s NewJeans. Mired in controversy and legal disputes, the group went yet another year with no new material. We’ll see how this all plays out, but K-pop is a quickly moving industry that values youth above all (especially when it comes to girl groups), so success is not guaranteed when (or if) NewJeans finally make their return in whatever configuration they’re able to.

2026 Grade: C-

What I’d like to see in 2027:

• Longer songs. Bridges. Final choruses. C’mon!!
• Less reliance on meme hooks and TikTok-friendly catchphrases.
• A full album from TWS. It’s way past time!
• CORTIS leaning into the REDRED sound rather than whatever they’ve been doing elsewhere.
• Cross-group sub-units and variety appearances. We need more interaction between these groups.

Previous years: 2025 // 2024 // 2023 // 2022 // 2021 // 2020 // 2019 // 2018 // 2017