BoA has announced BoA the LIVE, a three-date Japan tour this September – her first live run in the country since departing SM Entertainment and establishing her own label.

The shows land across Fukuoka on 12 September, Osaka on 19 September, and Yokohama on 20 September, presented under BApal Entertainment, the independent agency she founded in March 2026 roughly two months after her 25-year contract with SM concluded at the end of last year. They follow BoA THE MIC, her two-night run at Yonsei University's Grand Auditorium in Seoul on 27 and 28 June – the first concerts she has staged since going independent.

The Japan tour arrives on the back of her opening move as a solo operator. On 30 May – the exact anniversary of her Japanese debut in 2001 – BoA released "Ain't No Hard Feelings," her first single under BApal. The rollout was structured as a dual-market release: the digital single distributed through BApal Co., Ltd. and Idol School Japan Inc., with distribution for the PLVE physical release handled by Avex Korea. The Avex connection is not incidental – Avex Group ran her entire Japanese career through Avex Trax from 2001 onwards, and their Korean arm's involvement with the single suggests the relationship has outlasted the SM arrangement that originally made it possible. A YouTube livestream on release day included an appearance from longtime friend Crystal Kay, and the MV – shot in a camcorder aesthetic against cherry blossom scenery – framed the whole package as a reset rather than a continuation.

BoA's relationship with the Japanese market stretches back to her earliest years. She was sent there at 14, alone, to build an audience from scratch under a joint arrangement between SM and Avex Trax. It worked on a scale few Korean artists at the time could match: she became the first Korean artist to place two albums above one million copies on the Oricon, appeared on NHK's Kōhaku Uta Gassen for six consecutive years from 2002, and maintained a loyal Japanese fanbase across more than two decades of live activity. The planned 2025 Japan tour – which had included a date at National Yoyogi Stadium First Gymnasium in Tokyo, a venue she has returned to across multiple eras of her career – was cancelled in July after she was diagnosed with bone necrosis requiring surgery. These September dates are the return, now under an entirely different structure.

BApal's name combines "BoA" with "pal" – framed from the outset as artist-led and fan-adjacent. The Seoul shows in June were the first live proof of concept. September will test how that model holds in Japan: whether her fanbase there, built over two decades under institutional support, turns out for an independent run with no major label machinery behind it.