From Produce 7 to major milestone on KGMA’s Music Day

Close Your Eyes clinched the IS Rookie Award at the 2025 Korea Grand Music Awards (KGMA), held on November 15 at Incheon’s Inspire Arena as part of the festival’s Music Day. The ceremony, hosted with entertainers and media presence, highlighted the year’s standout K-pop artists and works.

On stage, the group expressed their gratitude to those who invited them and to the staff, and credited their fans, Closers, for helping them reach this milestone. They remarked that moving from trainee to a KGMA-winning act in just one year would not have been possible without fan support. They also promised to continue growing and to keep fans in their hearts.

Formed through the audition show Project 7, Close Your Eyes rose to prominence after their debut album Eternality and their mini-album Blackout. The latter’s sales surged to 470,000 copies by the second day, and their cumulative mini-album sales reached one million in seven months.

KGMA, a prominent festival spotlighting Korean pop artists and works loved by fans domestically and internationally, is organized by the KGMA Organizing Committee, Creatorling, and DODI. Incheon City and the Incheon Tourism Organization sponsor the event, with iM Bank as the title sponsor. Other partners include PizzaEtang, Label Corporation, and Hollys. KT ENA serves as the broadcaster for KGMA 2025, with TikTok Live providing domestic and global streaming (excluding Japan and China); Hulu Japan offers live viewing in Japan.

Incheon-based KGMA Special Reporting Team covered the ceremony, capturing Close Your Eyes’s moment on Music Day as they continued to lift their profile in the year following their breakthrough.