- BTS won Album of the Year at the 2026 SPOTV K-Pop Awards on September 6 in Goyang, South Korea, and was one of seven acts named to the ceremony's Bonsang Artist of the Year list.
- Newcomer group AND2BLE was the night's biggest winner with five trophies, including Best New Artist and a Bonsang nod.
- The widely repeated figure that BTS's ARIRANG tour runs "82 shows" is outdated — the tour has been expanded through official label announcements and now stands at 88 shows across 34 cities.
- The tour had already grossed $433.2 million through August 11, more than double BTS's previous touring record, according to Billboard Boxscore data.
AND2BLE steals the night, but BTS doesn't leave empty-handed
BTS walked away with Album of the Year honors at the 2026 SPOTV K-Pop Awards, held Sunday at the KINTEX convention center in Goyang, within South Korea's Gyeonggi province. The septet also landed a spot among the seven acts recognized in the ceremony's Bonsang Artist of the Year field, extending a run of recognition that has followed the group through its ongoing ARIRANG world tour, even though a younger act ultimately dominated the night's trophy count.
Organizers said the show blends hard sales and streaming data from Circle Chart with fan balloting gathered from around the globe to settle each category winner.
AND2BLE, a group that only debuted in May of this year, walked off with five total trophies, more than any other act on the bill. Its haul included Best New Artist, shared with ALPHA DRIVE ONE, plus a place in the Bonsang lineup and three additional individual prizes. Girl group KiiiKiii picked up Song of the Year, while sibling duo AKMU was named the ceremony's overall Artist of the Year, rounding out the three prizes considered the evening's biggest.
BTS's full haul: a top trophy and a Bonsang spot
BTS took the Album of the Year trophy for its latest record and joined AKMU, KiiiKiii, AND2BLE, KISS OF LIFE, NCT WISH and ALPHA DRIVE ONE on the Bonsang list, according to the Korean entertainment outlet Soompi. KISS OF LIFE picked up Best Female Group, and boy band KickFlip claimed Best Male Group along with a staging prize for the night's strongest performance.
This is not the first trophy the record has picked up recently. The same album had already won Best Album ten days earlier at the K-World Dream Awards, staged at that same Goyang venue, giving BTS back-to-back top album honors within a single fortnight.
How big is the ARIRANG tour, actually?
The award lands in the middle of a packed year for the group. After finishing mandatory military service, all seven members regrouped to put out the new record in March and mark their first joint return to a stage in roughly four years.
That comeback fed directly into ARIRANG, described by organizers as the most extensive production the group has staged. Kicking off April 9 in Goyang, the run has been expanded several times by label BigHit Music through official Weverse announcements, most recently growing to 88 concerts spread across 34 cities in 23 countries.
Money-wise, the trek has already rewritten BTS's own touring history. Through August 11, the ARIRANG run had logged 38 shows, sold 2.3 million tickets and pulled in $433.2 million — more than double the $213.9 million the group had previously earned with its Love Yourself run — based on Billboard Boxscore figures cited by Seoul Economic Daily. More than 50 dates remain on the calendar into March 2027, meaning that total is still climbing.
What's next in Latin America
The Latin American leg lands in October, with stops confirmed in Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Argentina and Brazil. The routing includes two nights each in Bogota, Lima, Santiago and Buenos Aires, followed by a three-night run in Sao Paulo to close out the region.
Set against that backdrop, the SPOTV trophy reads less like a standalone headline and more like one data point in a year BTS has spent rebuilding its live presence after the military hiatus, all while going head-to-head in the same categories as the younger acts currently topping the charts.
