Luminate's Q2 2026 survey shows 42% of Americans recognize BTS—nearly 4x the K-pop average—with favorability hitting a survey-high 46%.
BTS hit 46% favorability among U.S. music consumers in Q2 2026, the highest mark since Luminate started tracking the group. Big Hit Music released the figures on August 14, citing the global music data firm's latest survey.
Recognition landed at 42%, up 6 percentage points from the first survey in 2021. That's well above the all-artist average of 24% and roughly four times the K-pop artist average of 11%.
Jaime Marconete, Luminate Vice President, said: "BTS's recognition and streaming performance in the U.S. show the tendencies seen among top-tier pop artists achieving the highest results today."
These numbers arrived 16 weeks into ARIRANG, the group's fifth studio album from March. The album sold 516,000 copies in its first U.S. week. About 208,000 of those came as vinyl—40% of the total. Cumulative streams for ARIRANG hit 5.7 billion. Album track Normal saw a sharp rise on the Billboard chart during the same stretch.
Across their full catalog, BTS streams reached 8.7 billion, boosted partly by a resurgence for Dynamite. The group re-entered the Billboard 200 top 10 following their halftime show at the 2026 FIFA North/Central America World Cup final. (208,000 vinyl units alone—that's a number most acts would celebrate for an entire album cycle.)
