TWICE THIS IS FOR World Tour — Japan National Stadium, Tokyo (April 25, 2026) — A Decade Delivered All at Once
The Japan National Stadium holds 80,000 people in its 360-degree configuration. TWICE filled every seat on all three nights. What's harder to convey is what 80,000 people do when a group they've followed for a decade finally arrives at the biggest stage that country has to offer - and that the group clearly knows exactly what the moment means.
The first night opened with "THIS IS FOR," the title track of the 2025 album that launched this tour, and from the first beat the production context was impossible to ignore. The venue, built for the Tokyo Olympics and redesigned in cedar and pine from all 47 Japanese prefectures, sits open to the sky. TWICE's 360-degree stage meant there was no "back" of the house - every fan, regardless of seat, had the same unobstructed view and the same proximity to the production. The CANDYBONG ∞ lightsticks synchronized across the bowl in perfect unison, which at stadium scale is less a gimmick than a genuine visual phenomenon. When the crowd held them up during "MOONLIGHT SUNRISE," the effect of 80,000 lights moving together in an open-air venue at dusk was, simply, a lot.
The four-act structure that has defined this tour since its Incheon launch last July held up across three nights in Tokyo, but the Japan leg had specific additions that sharpened it. "ENEMY," the title track from TWICE's sixth Japanese album, landed with a ferocity that suggests TWICE understand exactly what their Japanese discography means to this audience and what it costs to hold it back from international setlists. MISAMO - Mina, Sana, and Momo - performed "Confetti," the title track of their Japanese unit debut album, live for the first time on this entire tour. The audience reaction suggested many of them had been waiting for it for some time.
The solo stage section (Act III) remains the most structurally ambitious part of the show and the most uneven - nine individual performances in sequence is a long stretch for any audience to sustain, and some members command that format more naturally than others. Dahyun's "CHESS" and Jihyo's "ATM" are the standouts: both perform as though they've internalized what the solo slot is actually for (a change of register, a harder look at the individual) rather than simply delivering a polished performance. Jeongyeon's "FIX A DRINK," including its bedazzled cowgirl hat, has become something of a tour signature at this point - the crowd recognition was immediate.
The Act IV throwback block - "FANCY," "What Is Love?," "YES or YES," "Dance the Night Away," closing with "ONE SPARK" - works as a complete argument for why a K-pop group with this catalog is capable of filling a venue of this size a decade in. None of these songs feel like obligatory hits. They feel like the evidence. The fireworks display during "ONE SPARK" was the production's most spectacular moment, timed to the song's final chorus and filling the open sky above the stadium.
The encore closed with "Like 1," the collaboration between Jihyo and ONE OK ROCK that appeared as an album track last year. At the National Stadium, with a full crowd and the ten-year-anniversary context in the room, it functioned as something else - a handoff between two of Japan's most beloved live acts, one legacy and one still building. It was the right song to end on.
What lingers most, though, isn't any specific moment. It's the ten-year video TWICE played before the encore - a montage of debut stages, fan chants, empty arenas during pandemic years, and the slow accumulation of rooms that kept getting bigger. The members couldn't hold themselves together watching it. Neither could the crowd. A group that started in 100-seat venues and ended up with three sold-out nights at the Olympics stadium, as the first foreign act to ever headline it - that's not a career arc that needs much editorializing. The show made the argument plainly enough.
TWICE's THIS IS FOR World Tour continues May 9 in Lisbon. European dates run through June 4 at The O2 in London.
