Jennie Is the Only Korean on TIME's 100 Most Influential 2026 List. Gracie Abrams Wrote the Tribute.
Jennie of BLACKPINK is the only K-pop artist - and the only Korean - on TIME magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2026. The list dropped Wednesday, April 15, with singer-songwriter Gracie Abrams writing her tribute in the Artists category.
Abrams, who earned three Grammy nominations for The Secret of Us in 2025, opened her piece with a single declarative line. "To cut to the chase: Jennie is a star." The rest of the tribute stayed in that register - personal, unhedged, deliberately stripped of the kind of language that usually surrounds K-pop coverage in American media.
"The magic at her core - the power that draws you into 'Jennie the Artist' when you're watching her onscreen or as one of 100,000 people in a stadium - is identical to the power she carries when you find her in the corner of a party or run into her in a backstage hallway," Abrams wrote on TIME's site. "She has a softness that only emphasizes her strength."
TIME's 2026 Artists category pairs Jennie with Luke Combs, Keke Palmer, Dakota Johnson, Noah Kahan, Anderson .Paak, Hilary Duff, Rauw Alejandro, and Victoria Beckham. The Leaders category includes U.S. President Donald Trump, Xi Jinping, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Pope Leo XIV. Korean-American snowboarder Chloe Kim and figure skater Alysa Liu - who took gold at Milan-Cortina 2026 - made the Icons category. No other K-pop act, solo or group, was selected this year.
The selection tracks a solo run that has outpaced most industry expectations. Jennie's first solo studio album, Ruby, released March 7, 2025 on her own label Odd Atelier, debuted at No. 7 on the Billboard 200 with 56,000 album-equivalent units - her third member of BLACKPINK to crack the US top 10 after Rosé's Rosie and Lisa's Alter Ego. Upon release, three of the album's singles charted on the Billboard Hot 100 simultaneously: "Handlebars" featuring Dua Lipa at No. 80, the title track "like JENNIE" at No. 83, and "ExtraL" featuring Doechii re-entering at No. 99. That made Jennie the first K-pop female solo artist in Billboard history to place three songs on the Hot 100 in the same week. Rolling Stone later ranked Ruby No. 29 on its 100 Best Albums of 2025.
The momentum has not stopped. Jennie's Tame Impala collaboration "Dracula" sits at No. 3 on the Billboard Global 200 this week, a new peak for the track. The Ruby (The Complete Collection) anniversary edition, released March 6, 2026, added six tracks including alternate "Jennie Only" versions. Her "Ruby Experience" tour - five shows across Los Angeles, New York, Paris, and Seoul in March 2025 - drew reviews from Billboard and the Associated Press for its cinematic production, with LA proceeds going to wildfire recovery.
What makes the TIME pick structurally notable is the timing. BTS is in its third straight week atop the Billboard 200 with Arirang and just opened its world tour at Goyang Stadium. In a year when the K-pop news cycle belongs to the group that defined the industry's commercial ceiling, TIME's editors picked the solo artist instead.
TIME Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs framed the selection methodology in a statement Wednesday: "There is no single metric that defines influence. Our selections are led by the stories that are shaping the world each year and the people who write them." The 20th annual TIME 100 Gala takes place April 23 in New York City.
BLACKPINK's full-group return is still coming. YG Entertainment has confirmed a new studio album in the first half of 2026 - the quartet's first since Born Pink in 2022. Until then, the only K-pop name on TIME's list this year is the one who built her own label and went solo.
