Eighty-one shows. Three continents. Then the lights went up. Photo: Korea.net / Korean Culture and Information Service, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Commons
On January 26, 2026, in a stadium in Hong Kong, BLACKPINK finished a tour and then just… stopped. No farewell speech that meant anything final. No announcement. The four of them said goodnight and walked off, and the biggest tour any female K-pop group has ever run was over.
If you’ve been waiting for the “what’s next” answer ever since — it already came, and most of it happened while nobody was framing it as news. Here’s the short version: BLACKPINK came back as a group in February, and then all four went straight back to solo work. The group isn’t in limbo. It’s just running on two tracks at once, which is the thing that keeps confusing people.
The part that’s more interesting than any of it is what one member quietly put out in July, and the single line she attached to it. It reads like a breakup note. It isn’t.
“Fans read the silence as an ending. It was a schedule.”
What the DEADLINE tour actually was
Numbers first, because they explain the silence that followed.
- 81 shows across three continents.
- Over two million people in the seats.
- Seven months, ending at Kai Tak Stadium in Hong Kong on January 26.
- The highest-grossing tour any female K-pop act has run.
You don’t come off that and immediately announce the next thing. The quiet after January wasn’t a group going dormant — it was four people who had been on a stage every few days for over half a year.
The comeback already happened — in February
Photo: PinkBeachPlanet, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Commons
Photo: Waka77 (public domain), via Openverse
This is the part that gets missed constantly, so plainly: BLACKPINK released their third mini album, DEADLINE, on February 27, 2026. It was their first release as a full group in about three years and five months.
So if you’re searching for what’s next after the tour, you’re standing behind the answer. The tour and the album share a name for a reason — they were one cycle, not two separate events with a gap in the middle. The group closed the loop and then split back into four directions, which is exactly what they did before.
Where each member actually is now
Photo: Simon O’Kelly, BY-SA, via Openverse
Four careers that keep braiding together and coming apart again. Photo: 서울연구원, CC BY 4.0, via Commons
Jennie. In July she posted the first poster for Less Than A Lover — a project she directed, wrote and scored herself. The tagline she attached to it: “The summer I chose to pause the love story.” Fans immediately read it as being about a person. Hold that thought.
Jisoo. She said her first full-length solo album would come after the group comeback — and she’s been working through a drama, Boyfriend On Demand, in the meantime. The sequencing was deliberate and she said so out loud, which is rare.
Rosé. “APT.”, the Bruno Mars collaboration, spent 37 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100. That’s not a K-pop crossover stat. That’s a pop-radio-career stat, and it reset what a solo BLACKPINK release is expected to do.
Lisa. Acting debut in the third season of The White Lotus, and a performance at the Academy Awards. Two things that have nothing to do with the K-pop machine and both of which happened anyway.
Look at that list again. Four people, four completely different industries, no two doing the same thing. That’s not a group falling apart. It’s a group that stopped needing to move as one object.
So why does it keep feeling like an ending?
Photo: Robbie Klinkenberg, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Because K-pop trained everyone to read gaps as danger. Seven-year contracts, sudden agency statements, groups that go quiet and never come back. When a group takes six months off, the internet fills it in with the worst available story.
BLACKPINK has now done the long-gap-then-return move twice. The three-year-and-five-month silence before February should have settled it. It didn’t, and it won’t, because the anxiety isn’t really about evidence.
The short answer
Is BLACKPINK over? No — and the proof is already out. A group album arrived in February, four solo careers have been running since, and nothing about the line-up has changed. The gap you might be reading as an ending is the same gap they took before, and it ended the same way: with an album.
And if the solo era has you planning a Seoul trip instead of a tour date — the city splits by neighborhood the same way the group now splits by member. We mapped what to eat in each Seoul neighborhood for exactly that kind of visit.
ONE MORE THING
Tteokbokki — the spicy rice cakes Jisoo named as one of her go-tos. Photo: Sung Sook, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
In one of the more candid interviews to come out of this solo stretch, Jisoo sat down on the YouTube talk show “Dex’s Fridge Interview” in January 2025 and, between questions about her debut and her ideal type, admitted she’s genuinely into spicy food — hot pot when she’s traveling abroad, spicy dumplings, and tteokbokki. None of that is the kind of thing an agency plants for a headline. It’s the sort of detail that only comes out when someone’s actually talking, fridge open, off script.
Quick answers before you go
Is BLACKPINK disbanding?
No. The group released the DEADLINE mini album on February 27, 2026 — their first full-group release in about three and a half years — and then went back to solo work, the same two-track pattern they ran before.
When did the DEADLINE tour end?
January 26, 2026, at Kai Tak Stadium in Hong Kong — the 81st show of a run that put over two million people in seats and became the highest-grossing tour by a female K-pop act.
What is each member doing now?
Jennie put out her self-directed project Less Than A Lover in July; Jisoo is holding her full solo album until after the group cycle while working on Boyfriend On Demand; Rosé’s “APT.” spent 37 weeks on the Hot 100; Lisa acted in The White Lotus and performed at the Academy Awards.