In 2024, I attended four concerts from some of my longtime favorite Korean artists, including VIVIZ, Loossemble, The Volunteers, and LUCY. All of these shows were at small, intimate venues in my local midsize city, Pittsburgh. All of these shows were held in small Pittsburgh music venues like Thunderbird Music Hall and The Roxian Theater with a guest capacity of about 1,000 or less, most of them closer to a few hundred. As someone who regularly attends concerts, intimate shows are by far my favorite kind of concert. It’s a different kind of energy, one that feels largely personal and extremely passionate. So when I started to notice the declining number of smaller and independent Korean artists touring the U.S., I was dejected, to say the least.
When comparing these shows to the BTS concert I attended in 2018, it was night and day. I saw BTS on their ‘Love Yourself’ World Tour in Newark, New Jersey at the Prudential Center, which is about a 17,000 capacity venue. The ‘Love Yourself: Speak Yourself’ World Tour, a tour that encompasses the ‘Love Yourself’ World Tour as well as a 20 show extension, was one of the largest global K-pop tours, a 62 show tour that spanned over 14 countries across the globe. In my opinion, this tour was an early-ish indicator of the rapidly growing market of Korean music fans in the U.S. who eagerly wanted to see their favorite Korean music acts live. Since then, more and more Korean music acts have been touring the globe, and in turn, the United States. While excitement grows for fans of top K-pop groups, the story is quite the opposite for fans of smaller, up-and-coming, and independent Korean artists.
Not every Korean music artist possesses the same ability to successfully tour the United States on large-scale stadium tours that acts like BTS, aespa, Twice, and BLACKPINK can do with relative ease. Korean music acts that are well-known in the Americas are often the ones with very large companies behind them and years of experience under their belts. BTS, aespa, Twice, and BLACKPINK and most other globally known K-pop groups are all under “big four” companies, meaning the top four music and entertainment companies in South Korea. These four companies, HYBE Corporation, SM Entertainment, JYP Entertainment, and YG Entertainment own and control a very large share of the South Korean music market, allowing them to financially support their artists on large-scale, worldwide tours. For Korean music acts that are not backed by one of these corporations, the opportunity to successfully tour in the U.S. is shrinking rapidly for a multitude of reasons.
Ticket prices
I’m sure we’ve all been feeling the ever-increasing strain of rising grocery, rent, and gas prices within the past year. For many Gen Z music fans, including myself, a decent portion of our spending money goes towards tickets and travel expenses to attend concerts. If you’ve tried to purchase tickets in the past five or so years, it’s safe to say you have witnessed an ever increasing average cost for concert tickets alone. According to USA Today, the average price of concert tickets has more than doubled in the past twenty years, shooting up from $52 in 2004 to nearly $136 in 2024. When money is already tight, most people can’t afford to pay $130 for every artist they would like to see live in concert. Many concertgoers are choosing just one concert to attend every year or so, making what was once a cheap and easy date-night activity into a multi-day excursion.
Ticketmaster and Live Nation’s illegal monopoly over the live entertainment industry are largely to blame for the enormous inflation of concert ticket prices. Earlier this month, a U.S. federal judge ruled that Ticketmaster and Live Nation have been engaging in anticompetitive practices that harm consumers by conspiring to raise ticket prices and fees. These companies have been forcing touring acts and venues into exclusive contracts that suffocate competition from independent venues and smaller ticketing websites. With this monopoly, Ticketmaster and Live Nation can charge concertgoers the highest possible price that they are willing to pay, maximizing their profits. The current settlement from the U.S. Department of Justice proposes a $280M fine, but until these companies actually separate, concertgoers can still expect similarly high ticket prices and fees.
Travel costs
This increasing price of concert tickets doesn’t even cover the travel costs that many fans must take to book hotels, buy plane tickets, or fill their cars with gas to make their excursions. As we head into mid-2026, travel prices are also rapidly increasing. The U.S. Travel Association reports that the average hotel rate is between $150 and $200 a night, the average cost of gas is $4 a gallon, and 2026 domestic flight tickets are up to over $450 on average. Even cheaper options are increasing in price, leaving concertgoers looking at hundreds of dollars to travel for a concert on top of the hundreds they likely already paid for the ticket. Adding up ticket prices and travel expenses, a group of 2-4 fans traveling for a concert can expect to spend $1,000 or more. Attending just one concert has become a stress-inducing affair that requires months of money saving and meticulous planning that is becoming increasingly out of the realm of possibility for Gen Z.
For the Korean music acts that can afford to tour the U.S. in 2026, the number of concert dates and diversity of locations is typically underwhelming. One of the top upcoming K-pop world tour’s is aespa’s ‘Synk: Complaexity’ 2026-2027 World Tour. This is not aespa’s first time touring in the States, having toured here twice before on their ‘Synk: Hyper Line’ and ‘Synk: Parallel Line’ world tours. Each of these tours, including their upcoming tour, max out at about 7-8 U.S. dates, most of which being in the same few cities. Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago, Seattle, New York City, Oakland and either Miami or Orlando are all typical U.S. tour stops for aespa and other top Korean acts. As someone who lives in Western Pennsylvania, unfortunately, none of these cities are a reasonable distance for me to travel more than once in a blue moon. Even the closest major cities are at least six hours away from me. This is one of the biggest reasons I was so excited to see Loossemble and VIVIZ come to my city, as globally recognized K-pop acts typically don’t bother to stop in a mid-sized city such as Pittsburgh. If the top K-pop acts are only making a handful of stops in the biggest U.S. cities and the smaller acts are struggling to perform here at all, many American K-pop fans feel utterly hopeless to see their favorite music groups live.
Visa Issues
We all remember when the U.S. government fired 300,000 workers in 2025, right? Unsurprisingly, this is causing significant issues for foreign artists who need to obtain specific visas before they are able to perform in the states. Korean artists must obtain P1 visas to be granted approval to perform on the U.S. legs of their tours. P1 visas grant access to internationally recognized athletes and entertainers to work temporarily in the U.S. for specific events. Since major staffing cuts, processing fees have skyrocketed, reaching over $1,600 per musician, processing times are painfully long, and screenings have become stricter than ever. Some might suggest expedited processing as the solution, but even those prices have become astronomical. Expedited visa processing can reach about $2,800 per musician on top of the already high application fees. Multiply the application fee and expedited processing fee by five or so group members and you’re looking at $22,000 just to obtain the required visas.
Delays in the visa process have caused several groups to miss events, delay appearances, and even cancel entire tours. In early to mid 2025, rookie boy group POW canceled their ‘POWERFUL YOUTH’ North America tour and co-ed group KARD canceled their ‘NEW ERA’ North America tour. Later in the year, rookie group BE:MAX had their visas unexpectedly canceled shortly before boarding a plane to the U.S. ahead of their performance at KPOP MinneCon in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Rookie boy group ONEPACT had to push back the September 24, 2025 opening date of their U.S. tour in Minneapolis due to what was described as visa issuing challenges. It has become clear that even being managed by a large, successful company will not protect K-pop groups from visa delays. NCT Wish, a subunit of best-selling boy group NCT, were unexpectedly unable to perform at SMTOWN Live 2025 in Los Angeles since they experienced delays during the approval process of obtaining their visas. NCT Wish is managed by SM Entertainment, one of the four largest K-pop management companies in South Korea. Even with the high likelihood that they paid for expedited visa processing, they were not safe from disgustingly long wait times due to extremely low numbers of staff.
Oversaturation
On October 14th, 2025, three K-pop groups were scheduled to perform in the same city, all on the same day. P1Harmony, STAYC, and EVNNE all performed in Chicago, Illinois all in different venues and on different tours. I can’t imagine this was ideal for Chicago K-pop fans or the management companies, as some fans probably would have liked to attend more than just one of these shows. This is just one of several instances of Korean music acts with overlapping fandoms touring the same area with a short timespan. Many K-pop fans are fans of multiple groups at once, so scheduling conflicts such as these often force fans to choose between artists they genuinely want to support. Oversaturating the market in certain cities leads concertgoers to miss out on seeing certain artists live, and this stings especially badly when smaller K-pop artists are touring the U.S. with decreasing frequency.
Earlier this month, the entire North American leg of i-dle’s ‘Syncopation’ 2026 World Tour was canceled. Their company, Cube Entertainment, reported the reason for cancellation as being logistical issues. This is clearly not due to issues obtaining visas, since the North American leg is in August and Canadian and Mexican tour dates were also affected. Some fans speculated that the cancellation was at least partially due to low ticket sales. One fan claimed that most of i-dle’s U.S. tour dates were struggling to reach half of tickets sold. This is not to say that i-dle is unable to successfully tour North America, but they are far from the only group facing issues due to poor planning. Boy group ONEUS have been touring the U.S. for the past few years in a row, with their most recent tour being their 2025 ‘H_OUR, US’ World Tour. Some fans reported that as some of the tour dates approached, many tickets remained unsold. Fortunately for ONEUS and their fans, they did not have to cancel this tour or any of the stops, but the root issue looks like it could be overestimating attendance.
Boy group CIX also faced similar issues with their venues on their ‘Save Me, Kill Me’ 2023 World Tour, with most of the stops selling under half of available tickets. The group also toured in 2022 on their 1st Concert ‘Rebel’ World Tour. On their first tour, CIX primarily performed in venues with 1,000-2,000 seating capacities, but on their 2023 tour, they were booked in venues with double that capacity. One fan reported that their 2022 Chicago concert was nearly full at a 1,400 capacity venue, while their 2023 Chicago concert seemed half empty at a venue which has a capacity that ranges from 2,500-3,800 based on configuration. Additionally, Fromis_9 embarked on their ‘NOW TOMORROW.’ 2025 World Tour last summer, spanning seven stops across the States. This tour was unfortunately one of several in 2025 that faced low ticket sales due to oversized venues. The majority of the venues were theaters with seating capacities of 1,800-3,000. Originally, Fromis_9 was set to play at the Mullett Arena in Phoenix, Arizona, a stadium with a capacity of about 5,000. This venue was unsurprisingly much too big to see the majority of seats filled and was later moved to the Marquee Theater, a venue with a 1,500 capacity. Multiple fans noted that once the Phoenix venue was downsized, the cheapest tickets jumped up to over $100. While these are just a few examples, many smaller artists are touring too frequently for their fandoms to catch up, leading to concert fatigue. When concertgoing has become such an expedition, most fans aren’t able to see their favorite groups multiple years in a row, contributing to overestimations in attendance.
Why does this matter anyway?
In my opinion, the state of U.S. K-pop tours reflects a larger trend: the “K” shaped economy. In this case, the “K” shape refers to an increasingly unstable economy that is being experienced wildly differently by each end. At each end of the Korean music industry are the big four companies, represented by the upward line of the K, and the other end, the downward line, is made up of relatively unknown companies with just a few artists. The valley between the upward and downward lines symbolizes a widening gap between success and struggle and a shrinking middle-class. Top companies are experiencing record breaking success and profits, while the ones towards the bottom are struggling to profit off their tours more than ever. Similarly, wealthy concertgoers are attending expensive, multi-day concerts with VIP passes, while less wealthy concertgoers are extensively weighing the choice to go to a concert at all.
I want to say that I don’t think any of these issues are due to a lack of talent or willpower from the artists themselves. It must be devastating for groups to create and release an album, perfect any choreography they may have, and begin rehearsing for a tour just to perform to half-filled venues or have it canceled all together. At its core, all of these issues point to a disconnect between the scale at which tour promoters and management companies are trying to operate and the reality of the markets their artists are entering. Ballooning ticket prices, increasing travel costs, extensive visa delays, and oversaturated tour schedules are placing a burden on Korean music fans and their favorite artists that are unreasonable and unsustainable. I don’t want to see smaller, independent Korean artists stop touring the U.S. altogether, but the success of K-pop tours in the U.S. depends on fans’ ability to afford and access said tours.