JO1

Eleven picked out of six thousand

JO1 exist because of a television format. Produce 101 Japan ran on the streaming service Gyao! from 25 September to 11 December 2019, drawing roughly 6,000 applicants aged 16 to 30, none of whom was allowed to be signed to an agency. Viewer voting whittled that down, and the final eleven were announced on a live TBS broadcast. Lapone Entertainment — the joint venture that produced the show — became their label.

The group debuted on 4 March 2020 with the single Protostar, which went to number one on Oricon and shifted more than 300,000 copies in its first week. The timing was awkward: a boy band whose whole appeal was choreography and crowd contact arrived in the month Japan's live circuit shut down. The first proper tour, Open the Door, did not happen until November 2021, and pulled about 45,000 people.

Ten number-one singles and a slow move into the mainstream

The commercial record is unusually consistent. Every one of the group's first ten singles — Protostar and Stargazer in 2020, Challenger, Stranger and Wandering in 2021, Midnight Sun in 2022, Tropical Night in 2023, Hitchhiker and Where Do We Go in 2024 and Handz in My Pocket in 2025 — topped the Oricon singles chart and the Billboard Japan Hot 100. Hitchhiker, released on 29 May 2024, was the first to pass 500,000 copies in a week and was certified triple platinum by the RIAJ, as were Where Do We Go and Handz in My Pocket.

The albums took longer. The Star, released on 25 November 2020, stalled at number two. Kizuna, on 25 May 2022, was the first to go to number one on both the Oricon albums chart and Billboard Japan; Equinox followed on 20 September 2023, and the compilation Be Classic on 2 April 2025 made it three in a row at the top.

Two pieces of Japanese television mattered more than any chart. The group appeared on NHK's Kōhaku Uta Gassen on 31 December 2022, performing Infinity, and reached Music Station on 20 October 2023 — only the second boy band from outside the Johnny & Associates and LDH systems to get on the programme, a booking that was read at the time as the industry loosening. They have twice taken the Excellent Work Award at the Japan Record Awards, and in 2024 picked up the K-pop Global Artist Award at the Korea Grand Music Awards and Artist of the Year at The Fact Music Awards.

Two departures and a nine-member reset

The line-up has changed twice, and not quietly. Shion Tsurubo went on hiatus and was indicted in June 2025 over online gambling; he left the group on 31 December 2025. Shosei Ohira took a six-month hiatus and departed on 31 May 2026 following a breach of agency rules. That leaves nine: Sho Yonashiro as group leader, Junki Kono as vocal leader, Ren Kawashiri as performance leader, plus Takumi Kawanishi, Syoya Kimata, Sukai Kinjo, Issei Mamehara, Keigo Sato and Ruki Shiroiwa.

The reset was staged in public. JO1DER SHOW 2026 'EIEN 永縁' — the characters read as something like eternal bond — was the group's first dome tour, running from 8 April to 20 July 2026 across six dates, opening at Tokyo Dome and Kyocera Dome Osaka. Two encore nights at Vantelin Dome Nagoya, announced on 23 April and played on 19 and 20 July, drew about 70,000 people between them and served as the finale. It followed the Wherever We Are world tour of 2024–25, which took in Japan, six other Asian territories and North America for a reported 250,000 admissions in total and closed with two nights at Tokyo Dome in April 2025.

Learning to work in English

The North American push has been built over about eighteen months rather than sprung. The group made their US terrestrial television debut on Good Day New York on 14 March 2025 with Love Seeker, and played the iHeartRadio Jingle Ball dates in Dallas and Los Angeles in December 2025.

The record behind the tour is ANIMAL, out on 2 October 2026 — six tracks, all produced by Dem Jointz, and the group's first release written and performed entirely in English. Pre-orders opened on 24 July 2026 alongside the digital single WHATCHA DOIN, with SAKURA following on 7 August. Dem Jointz has described the result as an 18-minute run through adventure, energy, celebration, growth and human connection, and noted that the nine members are very different from one another.

Speaking on 25 August 2026, Yonashiro and Kono were blunter about the process. The hardest part was English pronunciation and rhythm; Kono said the producer worked so fast that his advice landed almost before it was asked for, and Yonashiro said the sessions came with every idea already worked out. The two singles point in different directions — the lead built on American grooves, SAKURA setting traditional Japanese instrumentation against modern trap production.

Where things stand, end of September 2026

The EP arrives on the same night the tour opens. Beyond that, the eleventh Japanese single, AAO, is set for 18 November 2026; its lead track, IGNITE, is the opening theme for Tokyo Revengers: War of the Three Titans Arc, which premieres in the small hours of 3 October 2026 on MBS, TBS and CBC and streams worldwide on Disney+ outside China. Both the single and the anime tie-in were announced from the stage at the Nagoya dome finale in July.

The domestic festival year has been busy in a way that suggests the group is now booked outside its own fandom: GMO Sonic at Makuhari Messe on 17 January 2026, KCON Japan on 9 May, KCON LA on 16 August, and Rock In Japan at Soga Sports Park on 12 September. In-store signing events tied to the EP were announced on 25 September. One piece of housekeeping for ticket-holders: on 2 September the New York date moved from Terminal 5 to Webster Hall, with existing tickets transferred automatically.

Not everyone is sold. Reviewing KCON LA 2026, which ran 14–16 August across the Los Angeles Convention Center and Crypto.com Arena, the critic behind The Bias List called JO1 a skip — good performers whose songs did nothing for him. That is a fair summary of the group's position outside Japan: the performance level is not in question, the material is still arguing its case.

The shows themselves

The dome production and the American one are barely the same operation. In Nagoya the group worked with a live band, opened on member origin-story video before Venus, Icarus and Monstar, took the tone down for a piano-accompanied ballad, ひらく, and the unit track LA CHA CHA, pushed a Fairytale and Phobia mashup into outright theatre, and brought taiko drums and Okinawan lion-dance elements into the run at Handz In My Pocket.

North America gets the compressed version, in rooms that hold hundreds rather than tens of thousands: the Danforth Music Hall in Toronto, Webster Hall in New York, the Copernicus Center in Chicago, The Warfield in San Francisco and The Novo in Los Angeles. The KCON LA set on 16 August was six songs — WHATCHA DOIN, an English-language Handz in My Pocket, the then-unreleased STATUS, Test Drive, SAKURA and ANIMAL — which is a reasonable indication of what the club sets will draw on.