by Isabel Miller
Billboard’s Top Tours chart sees BTS’ ‘ARIRANG’ tour at number two for the month of July.
The ranking is based on the amount of revenue generated throughout the month, with BTS generating over $102.5 million USD across eight shows. During this period, the stars performed two consecutive shows in four European cities; Brussels, London, Munich and Paris. Attendee figures totalled at approximately 582,000.
At the number one spot sits Canadian R&B singer-songwriter The Weeknd and his ‘After Hours Til Dawn’ Tour. Across 16 shows held in Lille, Saint-Denis, Amsterdam, Nice, Milan and Frankfurt, the tour generated $124 million USD.
For BTS to achieve a number two ranking closely behind The Weeknd with half the number of shows showcases the purchasing power and support of their fans, ARMY, and its consistency despite the group’s four year hiatus. Alongside the ranking, Billboard also revealed that BTS is “the third act to gross a reported $100 million USD in multiple months,” joining Beyonce and Bad Bunny – again, emphasising consistency on a scale rarely matched.
Additionally, for BTS to sit closely behind a Western artist in the ranking while both tour the Western region of Europe places K-pop as a genre in competition with English-language music and artists worldwide. The rising popularity of K-pop globally has been recognised in ticket and album sales figures for several years – in 2024, nine of the ten best-selling albums globally were by South Korean artists – but it continues to reach new heights.
As of early August, the ‘ARIRANG’ World Tour has sold over 2.3 million tickets and grossed approximately $433.2 million USD according to Billboard’s data. That already makes BTS record-breakers, ‘ARIRANG’ becoming the highest-grossing and most-attended tour by a Korean act of all time. With 37 of the shows listed on the original tour schedule still to come and the promise of more cities to be announced in 2027, those figures are set to grow.
On September 1, 2026, BTS will conclude the North American leg of the ‘ARIRANG’ World Tour with four sold-out nights at the SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, before beginning the tour’s Latin American leg in October.