K-pop acts are storming international music festivals.
Two groups from HYBE — boy band Tomorrow X Together and girl group NewJeans — announced Wednesday they will both perform at the Lollapalooza 2023 festival in August, with Tomorrow X Together headlining the festival with Kendrick Lamar, Billie Eilish, Red Hot Chili Peppers and more.
NewJeans, alongside boy bands Enhyphen and Treasure, will also be performing at Japan’s Summer Sonic 2023 rock festival. NewJeans will be performing for the Tokyo leg of the festival on August 19 and Treasure and Enhyphen will perform on both the Tokyo and Osaka legs on August 19 and 20.
Blackpink will return to the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival as a headliner on April 15, making it the first Asian artist to headline the festival. The girl group first performed at Coachella in 2019 as a sub-headliner. Blackpink will also headline British Summer Time Hyde Park festival, performing on July 2 in London.
Girl groups from SM Entertainment will also feature in multiple festivals. Red Velvet will perform at the Primavera Sound Barcelona and Madrid on June 1 and June 8, aespa will perform at the Governors Ball Music Festival 2023 in New York on June 10, followed by Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival held on Aug. 11 to 13 in San Francisco.
Both ITZY and XG will perform at Head in the Clouds New York Music & Arts Festival on May 20 and 21, a festival organized by 88rising, an American recording company and agency that focuses on Asian artists. 88rising describes this year’s festival as a “return to where the company was founded almost eight years ago.”
There are also dedicated K-pop festivals in Europe most notably K.Flex, dubbed “Europe’s first-ever K-pop mega festival.”
The Frankfurt leg of the festival will be held on June 17 and 18. The lineup released on Thursday includes girl groups Weeekly, Billlie and Kep1er and boy bands Pentagon, Oneus, Blank2y and Younite, with the organizer teasing that more K-pop artists may be added soon. The festival will also be held in London on September 22, 23 and 24 but currently no festival lineup has been released.
BY CHO YONG-JUN [cho.yongjun1@joongang.co.kr]
