NCT 10th Anniversary Festival Takes Over Seoul This Month
A floating art balloon went up over Seokchon Lake on September 3. It will stay there through September 27, lit each night in the neon-green shade SM Entertainment calls Pearl Neo Champagne - NCT's official color, and the newest piece of a festival that now spans four sites across the city.
SM Entertainment confirmed the citywide program on August 31, tied to NCT's 10th debut anniversary under the banner "NCT 2026." The Songpa District government partnered on the Seokchon Lake installation, part of a broader civic collaboration that's turned the group's anniversary into public infrastructure, not just a fan event.
At Banpo Hangang Park, the Moonlight Rainbow Fountain has been running nightly water shows choreographed to songs from across NCT's roster of sub-units - NCT 127, NCT Dream, WayV, NCT Wish, and NCT U - since the start of the month. Over at Lotte World Tower in Songpa, the group is folded into the 2027 S/S Seoul Fashion Week schedule: a stage costume exhibition opens September 4 and runs through September 6, followed by a runway show on the closing day featuring archival outfits the members have actually worn on tour. A flea market selling personal items and stage pieces from the members runs the same weekend, with proceeds going to causes supporting women and youth.
The festival's centerpiece comes later. A retrospective exhibition titled "Neo Dimension" opens September 18 inside Lotte World's lower level, covering the ten years since NCT launched in 2016 under founder Lee Soo-man's "Neo Culture Technology" concept - an idol group built with no fixed member count and city-based sub-units instead of a single fixed lineup.
That structure drew skepticism when NCT debuted. A decade and six sub-units later, it's become the engine behind a chunk of SM's touring and merchandising revenue: the company's own second-quarter earnings this year credited NCT-linked pop-up stores and concert merchandise as a driver of a 22 percent jump in merchandising and licensing income.
None of the individual pieces of NCT 2026 are especially unusual on their own - K-pop agencies run anniversary pop-ups constantly. What's different here is the scale and the civic partnership: a fountain, a skyscraper, a lake, and a department-store exhibition hall, all timed to the same ten-year mark, with the city government as a co-host rather than just a venue landlord.
The balloon over Seokchon Lake runs through September 27. The Neo Dimension exhibition opens three weeks after that, closing out a month SM built entirely around the idea that started as a gamble in 2016.
