It’s time for Kpopalypse to look back on his predictions for 2025, and make all new predictions for 2026! Come with Kpopalypse for a look into the crystal ball of k-pop!
Before we delve into the incredible revelations of 2026, let’s take a look at 2025 – at around this time last year I made a lot of bold predictions with my notorious super Boram ESP powers! How well did Kpopalypse do?
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The big winner of the NewJeans/HYBE battle is NOBODY – CORRECT. NewJeans lost the court cases that mattered, reluctantly returning to HYBE subsidiary ADOR with their tails between their legs and without their creative director/manipulator/sixth member of the group/Kpopalypse bias Min Hee Jin to “there-there” them into compliance. HYBE in the meantime lost all the fire and momentum they had invested into a group that was clearly on a trajectory to have BTS-levels of pop-culture impact, and now their only options are releasing more comebacks from the poisoned well that fans will forever now see as “forced”, or just putting them on ice until contract expiry.
Meanwhile, people will finally stop copying NewJeans… just kidding LOL no they won’t – CORRECT. Almost every single girl group, and even a few of the boy groups, went all-in on NewJeansification in a desperate bid to try and snatch some of that untapped market now that HYBE fumbled the bag. Light fluffy uptempo beats, wispy pitch-corrected melodies, slightly retro and deliberately badly-lit VHS videos with collage elements and colourful plushie-stapling cut-up fashions were everywhere. There was nothing “super shy” about NewJeans’ influence, but there’s a big cultural void here and so far nobody either within or outside of HYBE’s roster has been able to convincingly Fillit.
The ‘shout’ chorus trend starts finally decreasing – CORRECT. While some of the nugus are still doing it, the groups that actually matter have veered off into different directions.
Rock remains big – CORRECT. Rock had a big year, and not just with actual rock groups, even big idol group names were adding more distortion into their mixes and strapping on guitars to flex their rock credentials. Of course the songs still mostly sucked anyway, but at least everyone looked cooler.
Lots of duets – CORRECT. While nobody really tried copying the sound of Rose and Bruno Mars’ “APT” (because heaven forbid k-pop agencies copy an upbeat pop song that actually sounds fun and works instead of some lame bullshit), a lot of people saw a western person and a k-pop person on a track together and thought “hmmm, profit”. Of course with everyone missing the point, actual profits were minimal, but the effort was definitely there as we were spammed endless duets between big k-pop artists and slightly-less-big westerners doing their best to ride the coattails.
Veteran groups do well, newbies struggle – CORRECT. Nobody is listening to your favourite C-list group. Not yet, anyway.
Videos with AI content start to suck slightly less – CORRECT. Previous to 2025, only boomers were fooled into thinking that AI visual effects looked good, but now even garden variety k-pop fan morons with reasonable technological proficiency really thought that 100 Blackpink fans would stand against a brick wall and bash their heads against if if their bias told them to… okay that’s a bad analogy, because they totally would, but you know what I mean.
More problems with ‘personal relations’ in the music business – CORRECT. This year it was the boys’ turn to be exploited and mistreated, with groups like Fantasy Boys and Omega X feeling the brunt of questionable management practices. But don’t worry girl group fans, I’m sure your faves aren’t being left out and we’ll find out all about their heartaches in 2026.
The Han Seo Hee saga continues – CORRECT. Between slapping down the ex-head of YG in court battles (the NewJeans girls could learn a thing or two here from a true court fashionista) and spreading rumours about your bias just for the fun of tormeting fandom idiots, Han Seo Hee had a typically active year.
Idols get more risque on social media – CORRECT. One of the big shifts caused by the influence of “global girl groups” with more relaxed skin exposure rules, plus Blackpink’s more recent live stages designed with global rather than Korean audiences in mind, is that the needle for what’s acceptable k-pop fashion is moving ever-so-slightly back in the 2015 direction. Watch out, there could be more Kpopalypse fashion class posts coming in 2026!
Coming out – CORRECT. I predicted people in k-pop to come out this year and boy did 2025 deliver. So far we’ve had Lara from Katseye coming out as queer and XG’s Cocona as transmasc non-binary. However if you’re one of those fussy people who don’t consider something k-pop unless the performers have “Made in Korea” stamped on their agency punchcard, we also had coming-outs from JWiver’s Ryujin (now Cherry), Krystian Wang of Boys II Planet, and Bain of Just B. This is an unprecedented shift for a scene known previously for keeping up appearances of total gender heteronormativity (aside from the odd male-on-male fanservice/BGP). Remember that you read it first at Kpopalypse.com, before it happened.
SM has a good year compared to other big agencies – CORRECT. Absolutely no issues in the aespa camp this year as they kept on keeping on, raising their popularity significantly. I’ve heard that SM’s boy groups did well too but I couldn’t catch any details of the news around it above the sound of all my gay male readers fapping.
Cultural education remains a low priority – CORRECT. Kiss Of Life partied a little too hard for the likes of many international k-pop fans, who asked that the group please stop enjoying black culture so much. Of course they weren’t the only ones to make some cultural missteps this year, but they were attractive women, which meant that people actually noticed and cared.
Music chart scandals come back – INCORRECT. The only complaining about charts this year was just corporations having a whinge that they weren’t making as much money as usual… and then whinging again about being overshadowed by Kpop Demon Hunters.
Kpopalypse Interview returns – CORRECT. K-pop website kpopping.com took the plunge and consented to a Kpopalypse interview, proving that the caonima spirit is still alive in the kpoponlineosphere! Who knew that other k-pop websites were this brave? You can thank them by remembering Aileegate.
Song quality will stay consistent – CORRECT, unfortunately, in this case it just meant consistently shit. Consistently shit is still consistent though, so I’ll take the win.
Despite getting flak for anti-feminist sentiment, QWER members continue to pop up in unexpected places that would suggest a more pro-feminist stance and this confuses the fuck out of everybody except Kpopalypse. Eventually something forces the issue and it’s revealed that QWER is actually a pro-feminist sleeper cell designed to target Korea’s right-wing gamer incels by the dopamine receptors and make them more amenable to girls who can rock, while taking their money of course – CORRECT. QWER’s parent agency 3Y Corporation was recently revealed to be the company behind the game “Five Hearts Under One Roof“, a live-action “dating simulator” but without the usual adult content that almost all these games contain, where your goal is to behave respectfully among five women that you’re boarding with so they don’t hate you. Being an asshole is not allowed, only pure feminist thoughts, or you lose the game and have to start over. QWER forcing incel gamer nerds to behave like true feminist allies in order to fill their achievement bars, now if that isn’t a feminist sleeper cell targeting gamers in action I don’t know what is.
Kpopalypse will continue to be a cunt – CORRECT. What else is new?
So as usual Kpopalypse predictions were mostly correct thanks once again to SUPER BORAM ESP POWERS – Michael Shermer feast on the dried poostains stuck to my asscrack! Now it’s time to see what Kpopalypse forsees for 2026! Super Boram ESP powers are now activated!
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NewJeans come back – but you’ll wish they hadn’t – HYBE try to claw back some ROI from the millions they’ve sunk into NewJeans but the girls don’t give a fuck anymore, neither do their support staff, and everyone involved puts in the absolute bare minimum of effort. The result is some total bullshit that looks and sounds like a stand-in NewJeans clone rather than NewJeans themselves, while actual stand-in NewJeans clone Illit continue to play nicer with the same bosses and get rewarded with the better songs.
BTS board the fail train – the first full group song from BTS after their miltiary hiatus is shockingly bad. After the breakout success of Kpop Demon Hunters, new k-pop fans expected better than this from a supposed legacy group.
But gosh those Kpop Demon Hunters singers do alright – you can expect Ejae, Rei Ami and Audrey Nuna to keep turning up all over the place… and some of the songs won’t suck, either.
YG finally start getting BabyMonster right – after about 57 failed experiments at everything under the sun, YG Entertainment finally work out what they’re doing and point BabyMonster in some sort of vaguely consistent musical direction.
JYP crosses the streams of k-pop and religion – frustrated that his wacky church YouTube sermons aren’t getting enough views, JYP starts insisting on more slightly-under-the-radar-but-not-too-much religious content in the products of his agency. I hope you’re ready for JYPE The Grace.
LGBT is here to stay – now that the initial doors have been knocked down and nobody’s career died from the impact, you can expect regular coming-outs from k-pop alumni as just part of the normal k-pop landscape now.
AI song controversies ahoy – if you think the use of AI in k-pop concept art and music videos is a concern, just wait until an agency gets caught using AI to write their entire artist catalog.
Rock gradually goes out of style again – 2025 mainly just taught k-pop agencies that none of them know how to actually write a decent rock song, so during 2026 they’ll gradually wind down their attempts at milking a culture they don’t understand and have their artists go back to sitting politely in wooden chairs in front of flower arrangements or whatever it is that people who are out of their depth making rock music think a good use of their artists’ time is.
Boy groups improve – with BTS’s legacy waning, there’s room for a new competitior to step up to the plate. Don’t expect the same level of commercial success with these ventures, but we might just get a banger or two along the way.
Idols continue to enjoy culture, including the cultures that they shouldn’t – k-pop fans, just like the KKK and neo-Nazis, love racial segregation and keeping foreign influences as far away from their precious Korean music as possible. Better hope your bias shaves those braids off before their next comeback. Everyone wants to be Norwegian, but nobody wants to be Norwegian.
A relatively good year for k-pop comebacks – well it couldn’t get that much worse than 2025, could it.
Another JAV/k-pop connection surfaces – and you’ll probably hear it here first. You can always trust Kpopalypse.com to report on this type of important cultural crossover, that’s because the healing of Korea/Japan tensions means a lot to me.
Kpopalypse gains some “different” attention – what could it be? I look forward to finding out!
Han Seo Hee has a quiet year – this is the boldest prediction on this list.
Asian Junkie posts again – actually no, this is the boldest prediction on this list. He may even finally get his favourite songs of 2024 list published.
Fifty Fifty’s “Starry Night” remains a reasonably good song – you could listen to it, if you wanted.
Noting the success of Kpop Demon Hunters, an agency decides that the reason why the songs were successful is the high-flying vocals of “Golden” so they create a concept just to mimic that specific type of vocal sound. Of course, nobody within a 10km radius of the agency building can actually sing like that, but that doesn’t stop the agency training up some attractive people a little in the hope of eventually striking vocal gold. However everything gets undermined when it’s revealed that not only is the song mid as fuck compared to “Golden” but the group in question are average singers even after their years of idol training and had to resort to using the same computer alteration tricks that everybody else is – this year’s hyperspecific prediction is aimed at the cyncism of those who doubt my Super Boram ESP powers!
Kpopalypse will continue to annoy cunts by being an even bigger cunt, cunt – you know it’s true.
That’s all the predictions for the next 12 months! My final prediction is that Kpopalypse will return soon with more posts!
