Musicals Broaden Their Hold on Korea's Live-Stage Chart

Musicals accounted for 34 percent of South Korea’s performance box office in the 27th week of 2026, up from 24 percent the prior period, even as the overall chart grew less top-heavy. The 10-point jump made staged musicals the fastest-rising genre of the week, while the share held by the leading genres slipped from 60 percent to 50 percent — a sign that ticket spending spread across a wider mix of shows rather than concentrating in a single format.

A Chart Led by Tours, Filled by Musicals

The top of the ranking still belonged to large-scale popular-music tours. Stray Kids’ World Tour: RUN IT [Seoul] took the No. 1 position, followed by aespa’s LIVE TOUR -SYNK: COMPLaeXITY-. A third arena-scale draw, the Wuthering Waves World Tour: To the New World, landed at No. 7, and the SERIES.L bill headlined by Hanroro closed out the top 10.

Between those tentpoles, musicals occupied most of the upper-middle chart. Elisabeth ranked third, ahead of Frozen, Beethoven, Billy Elliot, Yumi’s Cells and Those Days — six musical productions inside the top nine. The pattern captures how the two genres divide the market: a handful of pop tours pull the largest single grosses, while musicals supply the steady breadth of titles that keeps mid-tier ranks occupied week after week.

What the Genre Split Shows

Across the 50 productions on the box office ranking, popular music led by count with 25 entries, followed by 17 musicals and five plays. Dance, a multi-genre program, and a single Western classical concert rounded out the remainder with one entry each. That distribution explains the seeming contrast in the numbers: pop concerts are the most numerous individual events, but musicals — with longer runs and repeat performances — convert into a larger and rising slice of total box office revenue.

The week logged 28 new entries onto the chart, including the top-ranked Stray Kids date, the long-running import Elisabeth, and the Wuthering Waves tour. Movement was otherwise balanced, with 10 productions climbing the ranking and nine sliding down, pointing to a market in rotation rather than one dominated by a few unmovable hits.

Why the Concentration Is Loosening

The drop in leading-genre concentration, from 60 to 50 percent, is the week’s most telling shift. A more even spread means audiences and spending are being distributed across formats — licensed blockbuster musicals such as Frozen, Beethoven and Billy Elliot running alongside homegrown titles like Yumi’s Cells and Those Days, and both sharing the chart with international pop tours. For producers, a broadening chart lowers the risk that a single genre’s slow week drags down the whole market; for the musical sector specifically, the rise to a third of the box office marks a strong footing heading into the summer season.

Seoul remained the center of gravity for the period, with every top-10 production staged in the capital. That geographic clustering underlines how the national box office is still driven by the metropolitan venue circuit, even as the genre mix at the top grows more varied.

The figures come from the Korea Performing Arts Box Office Information System (KOPIS), operated by the Korea Arts Management Service, which aggregates reported ticketing data across registered venues.