STAYC at Six: Did Their Rookie Momentum Actually Last?

STAYC debuted on November 12, 2020, with the single "So Bad," and the reaction was immediate. The song racked up the highest first-day sales of any 2020 girl-group debut and became the only rookie girl group that year to enter Bugs' and Genie's real-time charts on day one.

Six years on, the picture is no longer simple. In 2025, STAYC sold out a world tour that stretched from Seoul to ten North American cities. In June 2026, their new single album sold roughly 24,000 copies on its first day — a fraction of what their releases moved just three years earlier.

A rookie debut that broke sales records

"So Bad" wasn't a fluke. STAYC's debut single album sold over 10,000 copies in its first week, the first female debut act to do that in 2020, and the music video hit 2.4 million views in 24 hours.

Critics credited producer Black Eyed Pilseung — known for shaping Apink's early sound — with giving STAYC a retro-synth identity that stood out in a crowded rookie class of "fourth generation" acts, the industry's shorthand for the wave of groups that debuted from roughly 2018 onward. That early distinctiveness is part of why the group's later trajectory is worth checking against the hype.

Two scoreboards, one group

Here is the gap an international fan is likely to miss: STAYC's 2026 story reads completely differently depending on which scoreboard you check. On the touring and streaming scoreboard, the group is thriving — sold-out arenas, a first Japanese full-length album released in February 2026, expansion across Asia, Australia, and North America.

On the domestic scoreboard — physical album sales tracked by Hanteo, Korea's main chart-data provider, and nominations at the country's big year-end award shows — the trend has been flatter, and in June 2026 it dropped sharply. Both scoreboards are real. Neither one alone tells you whether a group is "still doing well."

Why a first-day sales number matters more in Korea than abroad

In the Korean industry, a group's first-week Hanteo number functions like an opening-weekend box office figure — it's the number agencies, chart shows, and rival fandoms all watch first. It is driven almost entirely by dedicated fans pre-ordering physical CDs, often in multiples, specifically to boost the count.

That is different from streaming totals or ticket sales, which reflect a broader, more casual audience. A group can grow its casual global audience — through touring, Japanese-language releases, algorithm-driven virality — while its committed-fan purchasing base, the one that drives Hanteo numbers, stays flat or shrinks.

The 2021 rookie sweep that set the bar

STAYC's early momentum was validated at award shows, not just on sales charts. Their song "ASAP" won a Digital Song Division Bonsang and STAYC took Rookie of the Year at the 36th Golden Disc Awards in January 2022, plus nominations for Best New Female Artist and Best Dance Performance at that year's Mnet Asian Music Awards.

That combination — chart performance plus recognition from the industry's own award circuit — is what "momentum" meant for STAYC at the start. It set an implicit bar: could they keep winning both the sales race and the trophies once the rookie glow faded?

2023: the year the numbers actually peaked

The clearest answer is that STAYC's commercial peak came almost three years after debut, not at it. Each comeback — the industry term for a new single or album release, treated as a discrete promotional cycle with its own title track, music show performances, and press run — moved more units than the last.

• "Teddy Bear" (February 2023): 186,405 first-day copies, a group record at the time
• "Teenfresh" (August 2023): 352,402 copies in its first week, still STAYC's all-time high
• "Bubble," the Teenfresh title track, won Best Music Video at the 2023 Melon Music Awards

STAYC also picked up a Top 10 Artist nomination at those 2023 awards. By late that year, the group was arguably stronger commercially than it had ever been as a rookie.

Sold-out arenas while domestic sales quietly declined

What followed complicates any simple "rise" or "fall" narrative. STAYC ran two consecutive world tours: "Teenfresh" (2023–24) and "Stay Tuned" (2025), produced in North America by Live Nation.

• Stay Tuned opened with two sold-out nights in Seoul in April 2025
• It then covered Tokyo, Jakarta, Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, Bangkok, Hong Kong, and Singapore
• It closed with ten sold-out North American shows, from Seattle to Toronto, that October

At the same time, Melon Music Awards nominee lists for 2024 and 2025 show no STAYC entries — a contrast with their 2023 Top 10 Artist nod. The group's touring business scaled up in exactly the period its domestic award-show visibility went quiet.

Members are building footholds beyond the group's charts

Individual members have also been developing profiles that don't show up in album sales data at all. Isa released a solo OST — a song written specifically for a television drama's soundtrack, a common side project for Korean idols — for the 2025 series "Crushology 101."

Sieun, meanwhile, brought an acting résumé into the group: she won a Youth Acting Award at the 2018 SBS Drama Awards before ever debuting as an idol. Neither activity moves a Hanteo chart, but both widen STAYC's audience in ways a single sales number can't capture.

June 2026: a comeback that undercut the pattern

Then came "2:LOVE," STAYC's sixth single album, released June 16, 2026, after an eleven-month gap since their prior release. First-day Hanteo sales landed around 24,000 copies — down from 186,405 for "Teddy Bear" and 82,394 for their 2024 album "Metamorphic," making it the group's weakest opening in years.

Fans and outlets largely pointed to promotion, not the music, as the cause. Reviews of "2:LOVE" were generally positive, and online commentary focused on High Up Entertainment running a comeback with little pre-release marketing after a long gap — the kind of gap that had already sparked brief, unfounded disbandment speculation, which member Yoon publicly denied.

A new labelmate and an unanswered contract question

Two structural facts sit underneath the sales dip. First, High Up Entertainment launched its second girl group, UNCHILD, in April 2026 — STAYC's first labelmates, and a signal the agency is now splitting attention and resources across two rosters instead of one.

Second, under Korea's agency system, exclusive contracts between idols and their management company typically run seven years before they must be renewed or allowed to lapse. That would put STAYC's original 2020 contract near expiration in late 2027.

Reports since 2024 describe the agency as saying renewal talks are ongoing, but no member has confirmed terms publicly as of this writing. For a six-member group, a single unresolved renewal can complicate touring and comeback planning well before any contract actually expires.

What would actually settle the "still has momentum" question

None of this means STAYC is fading — a sold-out multi-continent tour and a first Japanese full album are not the moves of a group in decline. It does mean that "momentum" for a six-year-old K-pop act splits into pieces that don't move together: touring demand, streaming reach, domestic chart share, and award-circuit recognition.

The next real test isn't a viral moment — it's whether High Up Entertainment restores the pre-release marketing push around STAYC's next Korean comeback, and whether that comeback's first-week numbers recover toward 2023 levels or settle at 2026's lower baseline. The contract question due around 2027 will answer the rest.

STAYC's comeback sales, comeback by comeback

Frequently asked

Is STAYC still popular in 2026?

On tour and streaming, yes — they sold out arenas across Asia and North America in 2025 and released their first Japanese full album in February 2026. But their June 2026 single sold only about 24,000 first-day copies domestically, the group's weakest opening in years.

What is STAYC's best-selling album?

"Teenfresh" (August 2023) remains STAYC's all-time high, selling 352,402 copies in its first week.

When does STAYC's contract with their agency expire?

Their original 2020 contract would near expiration in late 2027, since exclusive K-pop agency contracts typically run seven years before renewal, though High Up Entertainment says renewal talks are ongoing.