BIGBANG

Seoul, 2006

BigBang were put together by YG Entertainment in Seoul and debuted in 2006 as a five-piece: G-Dragon, Taeyang, T.O.P, Daesung and Seungri. What marked them out from the label acts around them was how much of the record-making they did themselves. G-Dragon wrote and produced the bulk of the material, and the group held an unusual amount of control over songwriting and arrangement for a manufactured Korean group of that period. The music moved between hip-hop, R&B, electronic dance and straight pop rather than settling into one house style.

The commercial break came with 'Lies' in 2007, which sat at the top of the Korean charts for six consecutive weeks, and 'Haru Haru' the year after. In 2011 they took the MTV Europe Music Award for Best Worldwide Act on 58 million votes; in 2012 they became the first Korean act to place an album on the US Billboard 200. The running totals now stand at more than 140 million records sold and eleven number ones on South Korea's Gaon Digital Chart, more than any other group has managed.

The catalogue that still carries the show

Almost everything the current set leans on was written between 2007 and 2015. 'Fantastic Baby', the song that travels furthest outside Korea, came out of the Alive period. The Made cycle produced 'Loser', 'Bae Bae' and 'Bang Bang Bang', three singles that between them cover most of what the group does: self-loathing dressed as swagger, a slow R&B strut, and a hard dance chorus built to be shouted back.

That run became the Made World Tour of 2015 and 2016, which drew roughly 1.5 million people and was, at the time, the largest concert tour any Korean act had staged. The Last Dance tour followed in 2017, named for what it was — the pause before military service took the members out of circulation one at a time. There was no group tour again until this year.

Two departures and a nine-year silence

Seungri left in March 2019 amid criminal allegations. T.O.P withdrew from the group in May 2023. Neither exit has been papered over on stage: 'Still Life', the 2022 single that was their first release in four years, is still the closer, and it is still performed with T.O.P's recorded verse in place.

Between 2017 and 2026 the three of them worked apart. G-Dragon came back with the 2024 single 'Power' and toured solo under the Uebermensch banner. Daesung kept a separate live career going, trot included, and released 'Universe' in 2025. Taeyang kept recording. What did not happen for nearly a decade was the group on a large stage together.

Indio, April 2026

The restart was staged at Coachella. YG Entertainment confirmed a 20th-anniversary return and a global tour in a statement dated 4 March 2026, and the group played the festival's Outdoor Theatre in Indio in April — a booking first given to them in 2020 before the pandemic cancelled it, and their first full-scale group performance since 2017.

The first-weekend set ran an hour. 'Bang Bang Bang', 'Fantastic Baby' and 'Sober' opened it; 'A Fool of Tears', 'Lies', 'Haru Haru' and 'Loser' filled the middle; each member took a solo slot, Taeyang with 'Ringa Linga', G-Dragon with 'Power', Daesung with two trot numbers, 'Hando Chogua' and 'Look At Me, Gwisun'. G-Dragon and Taeyang reunited on 'Good Boy', and 'Still Life' ended it. 'It took us a long time to get here,' G-Dragon told the crowd. 'B to the I to the G to the Bang is back.' Taeyang, on the same stage, put it differently: 'We've spent half our lives together.'

They returned for the second weekend on 19 April and used that set to announce the world tour, and to say an album was finished.

The tour on paper

YG Entertainment and AEG Presents confirmed the run on 10 June 2026 with 31 dates across Asia, North America, Europe and Australia; the schedule has grown past that number since. It opened with three nights at Goyang Stadium outside Seoul on 21, 22 and 23 August 2026 — around 40,000 a night, roughly 110,000 across the three shows, and their first Korean concert in nearly nine years. The first Goyang date sold out in 22 minutes through Coupang Play, which reported about 210,000 concurrent users, a platform record. The opening Oakland date went inside half an hour.

North America and Europe followed: Oakland Coliseum on 4 and 5 September, MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford on 11 September, the Stade de France in Saint-Denis on 19 September, sold out in a building that holds more than 80,000, and Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London on 26 September, close to full. From here the route is mostly Asian and mostly stadiums and domes: Taipei Dome on 9 to 11 October, Singapore National Stadium on 17 and 18 October, My Dinh in Hanoi on 24 and 25 October, Accor Stadium in Sydney on 31 October, Rajamangala in Bangkok on 7 and 8 November, Kai Tak in Hong Kong across mid-November, then Osaka, Nagoya, Tokyo and Fukuoka through late November and December. Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta come in January 2027, Paranaque on 20 February, and the tour closes at Kaohsiung National Stadium on 27 and 28 February 2027.

'BiiiG', and whether the album exists

'BiiiG' arrived on 19 August 2026, two days before the tour opened, and was their first new music since 'Still Life' in 2022. It reached number one on Melon's TOP100 within an hour of release, with the largest first-hour listener count of any 2026 release on the platform, and topped Genie, Bugs and VIBE as well. Streams of the back catalogue rose by around 333 per cent around the release. The song was performed live for the first time at Goyang on 21 August.

No album date has been published, despite the Coachella claim that one was done. Both G-Dragon and Taeyang have said from the Goyang stage that more is coming — Taeyang's version was that calling it a day after 'BiiiG' 'wouldn't even be big, it would be small'. G-Dragon's was flatter: 'This is our 20th anniversary world tour. We started in 2006 and we've made it to 2026.'