ITZY at Seven Years: Why “Motto” Turns the Question Outward for the First Time

When ITZY debuted in February 2019, the K-pop community’s reaction leaned closer to skepticism than excitement. A new card from JYP Entertainment to follow TWICE, an unfamiliar buzzword called “Teen Crush,” and the familiar format of a five-member girl group. Next-generation contenders are plentiful, and fresh concepts arrive on the market every season — but only a handful survive long enough to define their era. Whether ITZY would be one of them was simply not something anyone could declare at debut.

Seven years later, in May 2026, that skepticism no longer needs to be argued away. ITZY has charted on the Billboard 200 with seven consecutive albums — tying TWICE for the most entries by any K-pop girl group — completed a BORN TO BE world tour spanning 30 shows across 26 cities in 16 countries (Soompi 2024-12-18 / Billboard official boxscore), and in September 2025 all five members re-signed with JYP, walking straight through K-pop’s notorious “seven-year curse.” Now, with their 12th mini album Motto set for release on May 18, 2026, ITZY turns the arrow of their message outward for the first time — asking listeners, “What is your Motto?”

This review is for the overseas K-pop fan who has never sat down with ITZY’s catalogue in depth — a look at why the group is widely seen as the most successfully settled act of the 4th-generation girl group field, and why Motto is not just their 12th release but the culmination of a seven-year narrative.

Strength One: A Performance-First Group That Doesn’t Flinch Live

ITZY’s identity compresses into a single sentence — they are the rare group that holds both choreography difficulty and live vocal stability at the same time. The thread running through “DALLA DALLA,” “WANNABE,” “Not Shy,” “LOCO,” and “Sneakers” is that the most physically demanding moment of each song sits squarely on the main hook. And yet the members keep the live vocal layered on top of it.

The strength showed most dramatically on the BORN TO BE world tour. ITZY rearranged their EDM-leaning catalogue into pop-rock and metal arrangements and ran the entire setlist with a live band. Live vocals cutting through unmuted band sound, sharp ensemble choreography, and disciplined pacing between numbers — a benchmark that has been repeatedly cited in English-language coverage (NME, Bandwagon Asia) as raising the standard for K-pop arena performance.

That same strength gets re-tested at every year-end ceremony. At the 2025 MAMA Awards held at Hong Kong’s Kai Tak Stadium in November 2025, ITZY appeared under the theme “HEAR MY ROAR, UH-HEUNG” as a Fans’ Choice Top 10 – Female winner, delivering a primal, full-force performance that English-language outlets pointed to as one of the night’s most discussed moments. A month later, on December 25, 2025, the SBS Gayo Daejeon stage stripped down the title track of EP into a fully remixed sequence dominated by dance breaks — a take that The Bias List and other critical outlets singled out as the ceremony’s highlight.

A second feature of ITZY’s stage craft is the clean separation of roles among the five members. Leader, main dancer, and lead vocalist Yeji functions as the group’s engine, leading the most demanding choreographic sequences. Center, main rapper, and lead dancer Ryujin — the architect of the WANNABE shoulder move — carries the mood of each track through facial performance and her low-register voice. Main dancer Chaeryeong completes ensemble detail with the line work earned during five years as a trainee, and the youngest member and visual Yuna is the most active in audience engagement on stage. Main vocalist Lia brings R&B sensibility and softness to songs that are otherwise driven by aggressive beats, carrying the narrative line forward.

Strength Two: The Most Consistent Global Chart Record of Any 4th-Gen Girl Group

ITZY’s global standing isn’t a single moment that went viral — it’s a repeatable chart record. The most emblematic metric is the Billboard 200.

Seven consecutive entries — a tie with TWICE for the most ever by a K-pop girl group, and a feat ITZY reached in just over three years from debut (Soompi 2024-02 / Billboard). Domestically, three of their EPs — CHECKMATE, CHESHIRE, and KILL MY DOUBT — received KMCA Million certification, with CHESHIRE alone moving 633,248 copies in its Hanteo first week.

Touring tells the same story. The BORN TO BE world tour, running from February through August 2024, covered 30 shows across 26 cities in 16 countries. On the eight shows that were reported to Billboard’s official boxscore, ITZY pulled in $6M gross from 56,200 tickets — enough to land the group in Billboard‘s “Top K-Pop Tours of 2024” at No. 10 (Soompi 2024-12-18). Compared to peers in the same bracket, ITZY’s ratio shows fewer dollars per ticket and a larger ticket count, the signature shape of a core-fandom-driven tour with stronger real demand than headline gross. The third world tour, TUNNEL VISION (kicked off February 2026), has already announced 12 shows across 9 regions, with a North American leg slated for the second half of the year.

Platform-by-platform fandom numbers, measured in May 2026, sit comfortably in the top tier.

By region, the United States leads both YouTube views and Spotify listening share, followed by Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Japan, Mexico City, and São Paulo — meaning Southeast Asia and Latin America operate as a second core axis of the fandom. In Japan, the group’s first Japanese studio album Ringo (2023) reached No. 7 on Oricon Combined Albums, and the second, Collector (2025), opened at No. 1 on Oricon Daily Albums. Maybelline New York selecting ITZY as the first Korean artist to be named a global spokesmodel for the brand, back in 2021, is another data point that captured the trajectory.

Strength Three: The OT5 Recovery — The Most Korean Narrative in 4th-Gen K-Pop

What separates ITZY’s seven years from other 4th-generation acts, more than any chart record, might be a single piece of fandom shorthand — OT5.

On September 18, 2023, JYP Entertainment announced that main vocalist Lia would step back from group activities due to anxiety symptoms. Her handwritten letter was short but unguarded: “Running this far, I realized I had been losing myself little by little.” From that point, ITZY released their second studio album BORN TO BE in January 2024 as a four-member group and embarked on their second world tour. But the album included “Blossom,” a solo track Lia had co-written during her break, and on February 25, 2024, during the second night of the Seoul tour stop, Lia appeared in the audience to cheer for the members — a broadcast moment the fandom read as the first signal of OT5 recovery.

Lia’s official return was announced about five months later, on July 8, 2024, at the group’s fifth debut anniversary live. The hashtag “WELCOME HOME LIA” climbed to the No. 5 spot worldwide on X (Twitter) that day, making MIDZY’s cohesion visible again. The 9th EP GOLD, released that October, re-recorded earlier tracks as “Final ver.” to reflect Lia’s return, and one line from the track “FIVE” captured the season’s emotional center — “Four is a lucky number / But nothing is better than five.”

Then on September 20, 2025, at the ‘ITZY MIDZY, FLY! ON AIR’ fan meeting at KBS Arena in Seoul, ITZY announced — without prior leak — that all five members had re-signed early with JYP. The members shared a single message: “Seven years felt too short. To repay the love we’ve received and to keep walking with the fans, we unanimously chose to renew” (Korea JoongAng Daily, 2025-09-21). K-pop’s longstanding “seven-year curse” had just been broken — in the quietest, most decisive way possible.

This sequence has moved beyond a roster-management story. Tatler Asia and other English-language outlets now cite it as a landmark case in K-pop’s evolving conversation around mental health — a member able to say “I’m not okay,” a group that held that seat empty while continuing the schedule, and the eventual reassembly of all five. That arc is the most durable adhesive between ITZY and MIDZY.

The Current Chapter: Motto, Where the Question Finally Turns Outward

ITZY’s self-affirmation message has evolved across three phases over seven years.

• Phase 1 (2019–2021): Outward self-declaration — “DALLA DALLA,” “WANNABE,” “Not Shy.” Not the me others want, but the me I want.
• Phase 2 (2022–2023): Self-control and conquering self-doubt — “Sneakers,” “Cheshire,” “Cake.” Kill the doubt, enjoy yourself.
• Phase 3 (2024–): OT5 recovery, solidarity, and inward turn — BORN TO BE → GOLD (“FIVE”) → Girls Will Be Girls → TUNNEL VISION → Motto.

The 12th mini album Motto, releasing May 18, 2026, is the culmination of Phase 3. The 8-track package includes the title track “Motto,” group tracks “Glitch” and “you And I,” and five solo tracks — Yeji’s “Pocket,” Lia’s “Asylum,” Ryujin’s “LOOK,” Chaeryeong’s “Undefined,” and Yuna’s “Tangerine.” Visual direction was led by Léa Esmaili, a mixed-media director working between Paris and London, who translated the concept of “inner journey” into surrealist imagery — inverted frames, a bee perched atop a ladder, a limousine suspended in midair.

Collecting ITZY Albums & Merch from Overseas?

With Motto coming on May 18, more overseas MIDZY are reaching for ITZY’s 12th mini — solo tracks for all five members included — alongside merch from the TUNNEL VISION world tour. A comeback season worth collecting.

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