BTS Label BigHit Music Opens 2026 Global Auditions for Next Boy Group
BigHit Music posted a new audition poster to its official site on Monday: boys running across an open field, chasing something just out of frame. By Tuesday, the label behind BTS, Tomorrow X Together and Cortis had opened applications for its next act.
The 2026 BigHit Music Global Audition is open to male applicants born in 2008 or later, regardless of nationality or where they currently live. Online submissions run through Dec. 5 via the label's official audition site. Offline auditions begin Oct. 3 and continue through Dec. 5 across 15 cities: Los Angeles, Vancouver, Toronto, Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, Tokyo, Osaka, Bangkok, Jakarta, Taipei, Seoul, Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi and Singapore. No advance registration is required for the in-person stops, and applicants face no restriction on which discipline - singing, rapping, dancing or otherwise - they choose to perform.
"We welcome all applicants who are pursuing their dreams," BigHit Music said in its announcement. "We hope for active participation from people who can show their own individuality and talent across a range of fields."
This is not an isolated search. SM Entertainment has run its own 2026 Global Audition since Jan. 10, when the tour opened in Busan before expanding to 21 cities worldwide, including stops in Tokyo, Beijing and Los Angeles. YG Entertainment's 2026 Global Audition remains active as well, with an Osaka stop scheduled for Sept. 20. Retopia Salon, a company founded by former HYBE executives who helped build BTS, is running its own 18-city search for a boy group set to debut in 2027. And the HYBE-Geffen partnership's second girl-group search has already produced results: three contestants carried over from an earlier round - Emily Kelavos, Samara Siqueira and Lexie Levin - were joined by a fourth member selected through the competition show "World Scout," with the group aiming to debut before the end of the year.
Cortis, BigHit Music's last new group, offers a sense of what a successful search looks like. The five-piece debuted in August 2025 as the label's first new boy group in six years and has since passed 5 million in combined album sales across two mini albums, according to HYBE's second-quarter earnings report.
BigHit Music's own tagline for the search, printed across the audition poster released Monday, reads simply: "The next star of BigHit Music is you." Whoever that turns out to be has until Dec. 5 to prove it.
