The 30 Best K-Pop Solo Artists Right Now, Ranked

From BLACKPINK's JENNIE and LISA to BTS' j-hope and SHINee's TAEMIN, these are the artists stepping outside their groups and pushing K-pop into new territory in 2026.

November 6, 2026

Four individuals are posing: a woman in a green dress, a man in a tuxedo, a man in a black jacket, and a woman in a white and black outfit. — Complex Original

Key Takeaways

These are the 30 best K-pop soloists right now, weighing global reach, sales, Korean chart performance, momentum, and editorial taste to spotlight artists stepping beyond the group dynamic.
The ranking puts JENNIE first, followed by TAEMIN and WOODZ, highlighting a solo landscape that stretches from confessional pop to theatrical performance and rock.
Eligibility requires solo music or a feature outside an artist’s group within the past two years, and the list includes K-pop-system alumni regardless of nationality or singing language.

If you've only experienced K-pop peripherally, you still know the formula: rows of cherub-like kids executing elaborate choreography with the precision of a military exercise. It makes sense: every note and step has been drilled into them over years of training. The music itself is heavily indebted to pop sounds of the past, whether it's R&B or rap.

From a Western casual, it can look manufactured and derivative. But in Korea, there's a different set of cultural values at play, where group harmony and perfection often take priority over individuality. The group comes first—which means relatively few idols make the leap to solo careers.

So trying to rank the 30 best K-pop soloists right now is a fun thought exercise, one that comes with its own challenges. Let's start with a basic question: What exactly is a soloist? All but three of the 30 artists on this list came out of a group, which means their group history is inevitably part of the story. To qualify for this list, an artist must have released music on their own or appeared as a featured artist on another song without their groupmates.

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Next: What exactly is K-pop? Some of the artists on this list aren't Korean, and some haven't sung in Korean in years, which brings up the usual debate about who actually counts as K-pop. Our rule is simple: If you come from the K-pop system, you're K-pop, regardless of what language you sing in now.

Genre doesn't settle the debate, either. A solo record can go places a group album never would, and on this list, that means rock sitting next to hyperpop, R&B next to hip-hop.

If you're wondering why some prominent artists aren't here, the key phrase is "right now." The eligibility window is the last two years, meaning an artist had to release solo music or appear on a song outside their group during that period. Legends don't get a pass, and neither does a three-year-old single from a member of the biggest group in the world.

Success matters, too. The ranking started with a formula that weighs global reach, worldwide sales, and chart performance. We also looked at the Korean charts separately because an artist can be huge abroad and an afterthought at home, or dominate every chart in Korea and remain relatively unknown outside it.

Momentum is also crucial: Did an artist peak a year ago, or are they still on the way up? And ultimately, taste matters more than any number on a spreadsheet.

JIHYO

Age: 29
Group: TWICE

Latest release: “Distant Lover” with Shenseea, from FANDOM.(July 10, 2026)

JIHYO doesn't have a solo single of her own in this window, but her collaborations earned her a spot on this list. K-pop is no stranger to borrowing from Black music, but it's rare to hear an idol sound as at home on a smooth R&B track like Jenevieve's "Hvnly" or an Afrobeats/dancehall track like "Distant Lover" as JIHYO does. After 21 years with JYP, she's formed her own label, EMITHAUS, giving her the freedom to follow wherever her creative instincts take her next.

Seulgi

Age: 32
Group: Red Velvet

Latest release: Accidentally On Purpose (March 10, 2025)

Seulgi's second EP, Accidentally On Purpose, is led by "Baby, Not Baby," a tribute to the legendary Britney Spears, made obvious by the "Oops!... I Did It Again" reference and the 2000s-inspired production. The title plays on two meanings of the word "baby": Seulgi is still your "lovely lover," but she's no longer an innocent child. It's a fitting statement for a performer who's been preparing for life in the public eye since she was 13, and a more personal idea than the group dynamic usually leaves room for.

KWON EUNBI

Age: 31
Group: IZ*ONE

Latest release: "Vibes" with Lim Seul-ong (Oct. 28, 2026)

Imagine Coachella with water guns: that’s Waterbomb, the music festival founded in Seoul and K-pop’s hottest summer event. At Waterbomb, KWON EUNBI is a “goddess” thanks to a career-revitalizing 2023 set that captured the festival's essence.

But KWON EUNBI’s genius lies in how she navigates that contradiction, embracing the festival’s uninhibited atmosphere while remaining every bit the polished K-pop idol. She sat out this year’s festival circuit to switch agencies and prepare for a comeback, yet her absence was still felt. The Korean press even covered the Seoul leg as “Waterbomb without KWON EUNBI.”

SUNG HANBIN

Age: 25
Group: ZEROBASEONE
Latest release: DEAD:ALIVE (Oct. 12, 2026)

SUNG HANBIN hasn't been a solo artist for very long, yet he's already earned a spot on this list. He just released his debut EP, DEAD:ALIVE, and the highlight is "UNDEAD," a high-intensity, rock-inspired track that feels unexpected for an idol whose image resembles that of a class president. That discipline is evident in the choreography, where SUNG HANBIN shows off his mastery of tutting and waacking—his fingers dancing precisely to the beat.

Dayoung

Age: 27
Group: WJSN

Latest release: "FLIRTY" with Jay Park (Aug. 4, 2026)

WJSN was built on elegant, ethereal concepts, but Dayoung was never quite meant for that mold. "body" was a complete 180, and her solo work since has felt like a much more natural fit for her, right down to the tan. She looks more at home in Los Angeles than in the cosmos. As the title of her latest release suggests, Dayoung’s music is flirty but still manages to maintain a certain innocence. While "body" landed her on year-end lists and earned her Best Solo at the Seoul Music Awards in June, "Number One Rockstar" is the true gem, a song that will make your heart swell.

YENA

Age: 27
Group: IZ*ONE
Latest release: "Dime Girl" with NOWIMYOUNG (Oct. 2, 2026)

"Catch Catch" borrows the cheesy, cutesy campiness of trot, the OG Korean pop genre, and cranks it up until it's practically Looney Tunes. That's YENA for you. Just try counting the number of distinct facial expressions she pulls off in a seven-second interlude. YENA's brand leans more J-pop than K-pop in spirit, which is why her collaborations with Hatsune Miku feel like such a perfect match.

BIBI

Age: 28
Group: N/A
Latest release: "BUMPA" (May 20, 2026)

"BUMPA" is a different BIBI, a long way from the songs she was self-producing on SoundCloud. Her earlier singles played heartbreak as dark, campy theater; "BUMPA" lets the joke take over, right down to a dance built around friends bumping hips. But it's still uniquely BIBI. She drawls, holding certain words longer than the beat asks, creating a slightly haunting sound that carries through her rap verses. Since "Bam Yang Gang" went to No. 1 in 2024, she's had an audience. Now, with a global Warner deal behind her, "BUMPA" is her bid to grow it.

SUNMI

Age: 34
Group: Wonder Girls

Latest release: "Forever July" (July 15, 2026)

Fans and the Korean press have a name for SUNMI's sound: "SUNMI-pop." Even she has admitted she can't quite define it. HEART MAID, her first full-length album, is 13 tracks of it, all co-written by SUNMI herself. There's a vintage quality to the music, drawing heavily from the synths and pulsing rhythms of Y2K-era club music while remaining unmistakably her own.

CHUU

Age: 27
Group: Loona

Latest release: "I Love You" (Oct. 7, 2026)

XO, My Cyberlove is CHUU's first studio album, and it arrived in January in the middle of the busiest stretch of any soloist on this list: nine releases in 19 months. The persona that made CHUU Loona’s most recognizable member hasn't changed: all bubblegum and bright eyes. But B-sides like "Cocktail Dress" reveal a darker, moodier side of an artist best known for her lovely ballads. Those aren't words anyone typically associates with CHUU, which is exactly why they offer a glimpse of where her next record could go.

EVAN

Age: 25
Group: ENHYPEN

Latest release: DEATH OF ME (Sept. 7, 2026)

In early 2026, HEESEUNG delivered one of the year's biggest shocks when he announced his departure from ENHYPEN to pursue a solo career, taking on the name EVAN, which he used while living in Canada. Naturally, the immediate burning question was: Why? EVAN's answer was simple: He wanted to make a different kind of music. DEATH OF ME was worth the heartbreak, and his journey is best explained on "Not Enough," a brooding song that'll hit for anyone who's ever felt tortured by their own ambition.

CHAEYOUNG

Age: 27
Group: TWICE

Latest release: Lil Fantasy vol. 1 (Sept. 12, 2025)

“This album represents the little world within me, filled with my tastes, thoughts, and attitude.” That's how CHAEYOUNG described Lil Fantasy vol. 1 when it came out last fall. It's a world she built from scratch, taking a hands-on role in the songwriting and production across all 10 tracks. Where TWICE makes music for the dance floor, the psychedelic dreamscape of “AVOCADO” was made for the nightcap when you get home. She has since formed her own label and named it after the album.

D.O.

Age: 33
Group: Exo

Latest release: "Every Moment of You" (Oct. 15, 2026)

D.O. keeps a hectic schedule as a leading man who spends most of the year on film and TV sets. His music moves at the opposite speed; these are the kinds of songs you put on when you need a break. His latest release, a remake of the beloved 2010s ballad “Every Moment of You,” slides straight onto that playlist. Play his albums BLISS and DOPAMINE back to back and you hear the same thing: a man exhaling between shoots.

Jay Park

Age: 39
Group: 2PM

Latest release: “C.R.E.A.M. (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 Remix)” with Wu-Tang Clan, Lee Young Ji, and E SENS (Oct. 16, 2026)

Jay Park is the premier ABK—American-born Korean—in the business. He grew up in Seattle on R&B and hip-hop, raps as much as he sings, and brought both with him to Korea. A Seoul distributor summed up the rest for the New York Times back in 2012: “Jay Park is not just an artist but also his own P.R. agent, fan club president and TV network.” Fourteen years on, the hustle has only grown. He still makes his own records, has a features list long enough to pass for a discography (the latest being the “C.R.E.A.M.” remix for Call of Duty), and now runs his own label, whose first boy group debuted in January.

TAEYANG

Age: 38
Group: BIGBANG

Latest release: Quintessence (May 18, 2026)

“Live Fast Die Slow” isn't in TAEYANG's usual R&B register. It's closer to inspirational synth-pop, which makes sense for the self-proclaimed inaugural address of BIGBANG's 20th anniversary year. Quintessence, the album it leads, is his first studio album since 2017. But the TAEYANG we know and love is still the one crooning and pining over love. It's why a crowd of college students at a university festival in 2024 could sing every word of “Eyes, Nose, Lips,” a song released a decade earlier, right back at him.

TEN

Age: 30
Group: NCT

Latest release: "OUTWEST" (Sept. 4, 2026)

TEN has always been a free spirit—a dancer who’ll pull off pirouettes as easily as hip-hop moves and who never played the innocent the way idols are expected to. A self-described explorer, he makes music the same way. “OUTWEST,” his first experiment since launching his own label, is euphoric tech house that gets more exhilarating as it builds into a trap beat. He took that energy to the U.S. on a 14-date showcase tour, which wraps up at Terminal 5 in New York on Nov 10, 2026.

EJAE

Age: 34
Group: N/A

Latest release: "Time After Time" (Feb. 6, 2026)

You know EJAE from KPop Demon Hunters, where "Golden" won her an Oscar, a Grammy, and a Golden Globe. But if your kids replayed the movie a few too many times, listen to "In Another World." It's the perfect song to belt in the car after a long day at work.

TAEYONG

Age: 31
Group: NCT 127
Latest release: WYLD (May 18, 2026)

In NCT 127, TAEYONG steals scenes with hair that’s been through every shade of neon and a voice that lands between a sizzle and a growl. He wrote lyrics for all 10 songs on WYLD, his first full-length album, and co-composed nine. The title track bears a family resemblance to the group’s catalog, but it’s more animalistic, building to a bridge that’s completely uninhibited. “Rock Solid,” his collaboration with Anderson .Paak that arrived a month before the album, goes all in on funk. TAEYONG shows how much of NCT 127’s flavor he’s been supplying all along.

HWASA

Age: 31
Group: Mamamoo

Latest release: "So Cute" (April 9, 2026)

“Good Goodbye,” HWASA’s best solo song, is about the end of a relationship between two grown adults; the hook admits that the more she comes to understand, the scarier it gets. Those lyrics carry a maturity that K-pop loses every time its idols get younger. HWASA has never fit the beauty standards the industry sells, but her appeal is undeniable. The music works the same way: a grown woman's songs in a business that would rather stay seventeen.

BAEKHYUN

Age: 34
Group: Exo
Latest release: Essence of Reverie (May 19, 2025)

In Exo, BAEKHYUN is the voice that makes everyone around him sound better. On his own, it's fully unleashed. That freedom comes from mastery—BAEKHYUN knows exactly how much control he has over his instrument and flexes it constantly. His palate runs sweet; on Essence of Reverie, the single "Elevator" sits between songs called "Chocolate" and "Lemonade." But there's another side to him, one that favors the slow burn, where his voice can do just as much with a whisper as it can with a high note.

SOYEON

Age: 28
Group: i-dle
Latest release: What a Wonderful Life (Sept. 7, 2026)

“I'm Gonna TOESA” is a band-led song about quitting your job to see the world before your youth runs out at a desk. It's relatable in a way nobody expected from SOYEON, who writes and produces most of i-dle's campy title tracks.

Her own solo took five years to put out, and she has plenty of reasons why: too many singers, too many good ones, too many pretty ones, and a 90 percent chance of failure no matter how hard you work. She laid all this out when Kian84, the webtoon artist who narrates "I'm Gonna TOESA” asked her to write a song for a rookie girl group he's championing. He told her a No. 1 is up to heaven. She disagreed: what's well prepared is what goes up.

YEONJUN

Age: 27
Group: Tomorrow X Together

Latest release: NO LABELS: PART 02 (July 10, 2026)

“Ice Cream” is basically a funky bassline over a dirty 2000s beat, which is pretty hot for a song that's supposed to cool you off. TXT tracks are highly produced, layered with twinkling synths and vocal harmonies that maintain the group’s sweetness; YEONJUN on his own is bare, sexy, and brash. He feels like he can do anything, and people seem to agree: NO LABELS: PART 02 had the biggest first week of any Korean soloist this year, selling well over 700,000 copies. Without a tour, he spent the summer making the rounds in the U.S. instead: Good Morning America’s Summer Concert Series, the Troubadour, a first pitch at Dodger Stadium, and Z100's Summer Bash, where he became the first Korean act ever invited.

j-hope

Age: 32
Group: BTS

Latest release: "Killin' It Girl" (June 13, 2025)

j-hope's 2025 singles are built for a stage. "Killin' It Girl" and "MONA LISA" are made to be danced to in front of 50,000 people with a band behind him. Even "Sweet Dreams," the slow one with Miguel, plays better in a stadium than it does on headphones. A dancer before he was an idol, j-hope spent the year on stage in his element: a world tour, a headline set at Lollapalooza Berlin, a Brooklyn show that ran 27 songs. Of the seven BTS members, he's the one who spent this window operating as a soloist at full scale.

Yves

Age: 29
Group: Loona
Latest release: "Hysteric / Adam" (Oct. 27, 2026)

As a soloist, YVES pushes against the expectations placed on female idols; NAIL is the clearest example, a record that's more uncanny than pretty. Her hyperpop sound—glitchy on the bottom with soft vocals floating on top—runs on the same wiring as PinkPantheress, so their collaborations (“Soap,” the “Stars” remix) made perfect sense. If the rest of her upcoming EP sounds anything like the pre-release single “Hysteric,” she'll have made the best work of her career before the year is out.

IU

Age: 33

Group: N/A
Latest release: Unknown Planet (Sept. 10, 2026)

As a teenager, IU was “the nation's little sister.” In 2022, she became the first Korean woman to headline Seoul's Olympic Stadium, selling out all 88,000 seats within an hour. She's just as big on screen, with hit dramas on Netflix and Disney+ in the last two years. The Korean title of “Unknown Planet” is a pun, meaning either “from this star” or “from this farewell,” and the song lives in that gap, her voice swelling and pulling back as it reaches for something already gone. It's one half of a two-song single she released while her album and tour were on hold for health reasons, and it went straight to No. 1 in Korea anyway.

ROSÉ

Age: 29
Group: BLACKPINK
Latest release: "New Trick" (Sept. 17, 2026)

“APT.” was the breakout—an earworm that followed you from grocery store aisles to the car radio—spending most of a year on the Hot 100 before opening the Grammys. But the other tracks on rosie reveal more about ROSÉ's inner landscape. “number one girl” is a delicate piano ballad that begs to be told she's enough while admitting she doesn't know why she needs to hear it. That admission of insecurity stands in sharp contrast to the impenetrable aura surrounding BLACKPINK.

G-DRAGON

Age: 38
Group: BIGBANG

Latest release: Übermensch (Feb. 25, 2025)

Picture it: Chrome Hearts sunglasses and a Chanel tweed jacket on a 5'7" frame, a tenor voice pushed through the nose. It shouldn't work, yet G-DRAGON is the swaggiest mfer born on the Korean peninsula.

The funky Anderson .Paak collaboration “Too Bad” stands out on Übermensch, his first full-length album since 2013. Typically, a 12-year gap between albums would render an artist irrelevant, but it cost G-D nothing: his 2025 tour drew 825,000 fans across Asia, North America, and Europe.

LISA

Age: 29
Group: BLACKPINK

Latest release: PRESS PLAY (Oct. 23, 2026)

Of the four, LISA's music comes closest to what fans expect from BLACKPINK. Where the others let insecurity into their solo records, hers are pure ego. Go looking for a vulnerable lyric across her catalog, and you'll be looking a while.

The last two years have been big even by her standards: an acting debut in season 3 of The White Lotus, set in her home country, followed by the first Las Vegas residency ever given to a K-pop idol, six nights in November that sold out in under 10 minutes. Her latest album, PRESS PLAY, just arrived, and the energetic “SaWaDiKa” is the song to start with. The title is Thai for hello—a fitting introduction from one of the biggest Southeast Asian stars in pop.

WOODZ

Age: 30
Group: Uniq

Latest release: "Come into my world!" (Oct. 20, 2026)

"Drowning" was a B-side released in 2023 on an album that performed modestly.

A year later, WOODZ took the stage in his military uniform (he was in the middle of his mandatory enlistment) with an anthem about ruptured love and became the biggest rock act in Korea. It ended 2025 as the No. 1 song in Korea, and it has the longest top 10 run in Melon chart history, eclipsing NewJeans' "Hype Boy" and BTS’ "Dynamite." Two years after it took off, it's still jumping back into the top 10.Then he did what you're supposed to do with that kind of momentum: a 17-track album and a 31-show world tour that wraps with two sold-out nights in one of Seoul's most prominent arenas. The appeal is not complicated—a man at center stage singing his guts out.

TAEMIN

Age: 33
Group: SHINee

Latest release: PHASE 1: Soft Violence (Aug. 31, 2026)

TAEMIN is best experienced on stage.

It was the caliber of his 2024–25 tour performances, where every U.S. stop sold out within an hour, that helped earn him a Coachella booking this year as the first Korean male solo artist in the festival's history.

The set played like two acts of theater over 50 minutes, swinging from full-company numbers like “Permission” and “Heaven” to ballads sung alone at a piano, the most poignant being “Frankenstein,” which turns the process of conforming into a tragedy of disfigurement. He could have coasted on 12 years of solo material. Instead, he debuted six new songs on the Mojave stage, offering a preview of the record that followed in August.

That Coachella performance is technically lost media now, its official stream privated since the weekend ended. The songs aren't: PHASE 1: Soft Violence is the most personal chapter of his career yet, as on “Parasite,” an allegorical track that makes TAEMIN's feelings toward his most recent former label viscerally clear. The North American leg of his tour was postponed this fall when key members of his crew couldn't secure U.S. visas.

For an artist whose music is best witnessed live, the wait is especially frustrating. In the meantime, his grand-scale 2024 award show performance offers a taste of what audiences have to look forward to.

JENNIE

Age: 30
Group: BLACKPINK

Latest release: Fallen Angel (Aug. 28, 2026)

JENNIE has been one of the most talked-about idols for a decade, and the strange part is how little of the discourse she seems to want. She's clearly shy, often coming off as aloof, and yet these qualities only draw people in more.

The music is where you get to see the layers.

There's the bravado of "like JENNIE," a flex that's closing in on 300 million views, juxtaposed with "HEAVEN," an intensely vulnerable piece about addiction to unhealthy love that takes real bravery to release when you know exactly how closely it'll be examined. Both are her, and so is everything in between: she can get on a Tame Impala track and turn it into the song of the summer or put Doechii on "ExtraL" and have it be an anthem for women.

That range got her through a summer of festivals across three continents: seven headline sets in 2026, from Governors Ball in New York to Summer Sonic in Tokyo.