Ticket sales rise across pop, musicals and dance, led by major tours from Blackpink and Psy.

Ticket sales in this year’s third quarter reached a record high, boosted by strong performances in pop music and musicals. A report by the Arts Management Support Center using KOPIS data for Q3 2025 shows total ticket sales for July–September at about 461.5 billion won, with roughly 6.53 million tickets sold.

Ticket sales and tickets sold rose 12.8% and 20% year on year, respectively, marking the biggest quarterly totals since KOPIS began compiling data in 2019.

By genre, gains were driven by popular music, musicals and dance. In the third quarter, ticket sales in the popular music genre stood at about 263.7 billion won, up 22.8% year over year; musicals reached about 138.7 billion won, up 14.9%; and dance performances rose by 96.2% to about 6.4 billion won.

Psy’s “Hummock Show” led the third-quarter market across regions, with Busan ranking 6th, Suwon 10th, Daegu 16th, Gwangju 18th and Daejeon 20th in the quarter.

Among the top 20 performances by ticket sales in Q3, 12 were in popular music and seven were musicals. This mix underscored broad demand across genres this quarter.

Musical Wicked’s Korea run, Aladdin in Busan, and Phantom in Seoul occupied the top three spots. Fourth place went to Blackpink’s world tour show at Goyang Stadium over two days, and fifth was Psy’s summer concert “Hummock Show” in Gwacheon.