BTS have said they want to stay together until they’re in their 60s, even though RM has admitted to considering disbanding “thousands of times” due to stress.
The K-Pop icons recently announced their long-awaited comeback by revealing plans for a new album and a global run of dates. ‘ARIRANG’ is due out on March 30, and will be the group’s first album since 2020’s ‘Be’ and their first release since their anthology LP ‘Proof’ in 2022.
Ahead of its release, the band spoke to GQ and opened up about navigating the pressure of their return, and their long-term plans for the future – following a four-year break to pursue solo opportunities and finish their respective enlistments in the South Korean military.
“If we can keep this going, then maybe we can be dancing in our 60s… as long as we’re willing – I think maybe into our 50s, into our 60s – we can always be together as a band,” Suga told the publication. “Maybe it’ll be a little bit hard on our knees. But I think we can do that.”
RM, however, also opened up about the pressure of living up to the band’s success pre-hiatus. In a December livestream, the rapper told fans that he’d considered “thousands of times” whether it would be “better for the team to disband or go on hiatus” because of the stress.
“I think it’s RM’s love language to ARMY in a way,” Jimin said of RM’s comments. “It really shows how emotionally invested he is in the group and in ARMY as well. I think it was very RM to be vulnerable and say things like that.”
“RM is like the identity of this group,” added V. “He’s the core leader of the group, so he must feel so much more pressure than the rest of us do. I usually don’t have that much pressure, but it seems like he does.”
The band also reflected on the difficulty of being apart during their hiatus. V recalled how Jungkook became particularly emotional when they were spending time together “before we all got discharged from the military service.”
“He bawled,” V said. “Jungkook cried because he really wanted to be on stage, and he just really wanted to perform.”
BTS recently announced the cities, venues and dates for their huge world tour in 2026 and 2027. With the trek set to cover 34 regions and 79 live shows, it will be their biggest tour yet.
Dates kick off this April with multiple concerts in Goyang, South Korea, and Tokyo, Japan, before following with dates in North America and Europe. Only two UK shows are lined-up, taking place in London on July 6 and 7 2026.
From there, the band head back to North America, before embarking on more shows in South America, Asia, and Australia. Find all ticket information here and here.
They also shared news that they will live stream their comeback performance on Netflix, in a new film titled BTS The Comeback Live | ARIRANG.
The stream will be followed by the documentary BTS: The Return, premiering on the streaming service on March 27. A statement described it as “an intimate documentary film chronicling the making of the band’s new album” that “offers fans a rare, behind-the-scenes look at the journey behind BTS’s highly-anticipated return.”
Meanwhile, their upcoming new record will draw on a similar emotional depth of the folk song it is named after and “take a dive into the sense of yearning that rises up at different points in life, as well as the ebb and flow journeys we all take” it was recently confirmed in a press release.
According to a statement, the album will also “span a wide range of emotions, including love and longing, it is also expected to strike a balance between deeply personal and universally relatable”.
In other news, Diplo recently confirmed that he was working on ‘ARIRANG’, and has said that the record was “gonna shock the world”.