In January 2026, TWICE kicked off their North American tour at Rogers Arena in Vancouver — and every seat was taken. Over 27,000 fans packed the venue, with tickets selling out weeks in advance. For a group in their 11th year together, it was a remarkable sight.

There's a term that floats around the K-pop industry: the "7-year curse." The idea is that girl groups either disband or lose momentum within seven years — usually when initial contracts expire and members, now in their mid-to-late twenties, start drifting. But TWICE, now in their 9th year (as of 2024), isn't fading. They're breaking their own records. In 2024 alone, they moved 2.21 million albums. Their 2025–2026 world tour grossed $93.8 million from just the first 24 shows.

So how are they doing it?

What Even Is the 7-Year Curse?

Most K-pop girl groups don't make it past seven years. In 2009, South Korea's Fair Trade Commission capped entertainment contracts at a maximum of seven years — making that the natural expiration point for most idol deals. By the time contracts run out, members are typically in their mid-to-late twenties, and groups built around "youthful" and "cute" concepts start running out of road.

The data backs it up. The average active lifespan of a K-pop girl group is five to seven years, and the rate of full-group re-signings is under 2%. Boy groups tell a different story — Shinhwa has been going for over 20 years, Super Junior for 14, and BIGBANG for 13, despite military service breaks in between.

Why the gap? Industry analysts point to how girl groups are marketed. Concepts rooted in youth, cuteness, and freshness have a built-in shelf life. Boy groups, on the other hand, can pivot to charisma and maturity as they age. Girl groups rarely get that same flexibility.

History makes the pattern clear:

• 2NE1: Debuted 2009 → Disbanded 2016 (year 7)
• Wonder Girls: Debuted 2007 → Disbanded 2017 (technically 10 years, but with long activity gaps in the middle)
• Girls' Generation: Debuted 2007 → Jessica left in 2014, activity wound down afterward

Just surviving year seven is considered a feat. TWICE didn't just survive — they made it to year nine and signed a second round of contracts. All nine of them.

All 9 Members. Second Renewal. That's Unheard Of.

When TWICE announced their first contract renewal in 2022, the industry took notice. All nine members chose to stay with JYP Entertainment. In a space where full-group renewals are almost mythological — happening in fewer than 2% of groups — it was a genuine surprise.

Then came July 2025. Reports surfaced that TWICE had signed a second renewal, just ahead of their 10th anniversary in October. JYP hasn't officially confirmed the details, but the timing lines up: the group had just dropped their fourth full-length album, THIS IS FOR, and immediately launched a 78-city world tour.

Chaeyoung was candid about what the renewal process looked like in an interview: "The revenue split became more favorable for us after re-signing." Nayeon added, "The conversations weren't easy, but we all wanted to stay together."

Compare that to Girls' Generation, who also started as nine members. In 2014 — their seventh year — Jessica left. The remaining eight kept going, but the momentum was never quite the same. Their 15th anniversary reunion in 2022 was touching, but it felt more like a nostalgic callback than a comeback.

TWICE is a different story. No departures. No long breaks. Just continued growth.

The Revenue Curve Is Going Up, Not Down

The typical arc for a K-pop girl group peaks around years three or four, then gradually fades. TWICE is doing the opposite.

The numbers tell the story:

• 2024: Billboard 200 #1 with With YOU-th — the highest first-week sales of any album that year (95,000 units)
• Career total: Over 20 million albums sold globally (14.5M in Korea + 5.4M in Japan)
• Oceania record: 50,000 tickets sold across four arena shows in Sydney and Melbourne — the most of any K-pop arena tour in the region

This isn't a group holding steady. This is growth. The supposed year-seven ceiling? TWICE walked straight through it.

But it raises an obvious question: where are the new fans coming from? The loyal ONCE fanbase (TWICE's fandom name) is well-established, but sustaining this kind of momentum requires fresh audiences.

The tour geography offers a clue. The THIS IS FOR World Tour spans 78 cities, with a heavy North American and European leg — a far cry from the Korea-and-Japan focus of their early years. Meanwhile, songs like "Cheer Up," "TT," and "What is Love?" keep resurfacing on TikTok and YouTube Shorts, pulling in younger fans who weren't even in middle school when those songs came out.

Group First, But Solo Too

After the 2022 re-signing, JYP quietly shifted strategy: members could now pursue solo projects.

Nayeon went first, dropping her debut solo album IM NAYEON in June 2022. It charted on the Billboard 200, and the lead single "POP!" crossed 100 million views on YouTube.

MISAMO — the Japanese line of Mina, Sana, and Momo — launched as a dedicated sub-unit, releasing their debut album Masterpiece in 2023. On February 4, 2026, they dropped their first full-length album, PLAY, deepening TWICE's already strong foothold in Japan.

Dahyun is working toward her acting debut, and Jihyo and Chaeyoung have their own solo projects underway.

Why does this matter? When members have creative outlets outside the group, the group itself stops feeling like a cage. It becomes a choice. That's a completely different dynamic — and it's largely why BLACKPINK was able to re-sign with YG in 2023. The members negotiated individual freedom alongside the group's continuation.

Contrast that with 2NE1. One of the central reasons for their 2016 disbandment was the lack of individual opportunity. CL wanted to break into the US market; Park Bom wanted to go solo. YG blocked both. The group fell apart.

TWICE avoided that trap. Group and solo coexist, and both are better for it.

How Do They Stack Up Against the Legends?

Looking at what happened to other 9th-year girl groups puts TWICE's achievement into sharper relief.

Girls' Generation debuted in 2007 and dominated the 2009–2012 era as the definitive "national girl group" — racking up 98 music show wins. But the 2014 departure of Jessica created a fracture that never fully healed. The eight-member lineup carried on, but the momentum was never the same. Their 2022 15th anniversary reunion was meaningful and emotional — but it read more as a celebration of the past than a return to the present.

2NE1 is practically the textbook case for the 7-year curse. They were unstoppable from 2011 to 2013 — "I Am The Best," "Lonely," "Come Back Home" dropped back to back, and they held a spot in the Melon Top 10 for 110 consecutive weeks (a girl group record). Then in 2016, seven years in, it was over. Member tensions, contract disputes, and a creative environment that left no room for individual pursuits all played a role.

Red Velvet, TWICE's closest contemporary, is another exception to the rule. Debuting in 2014, all five members re-signed in 2022. They've kept releasing consistently — "Red Flavor," "Psycho," "Feel My Rhythm" — while members have built their own profiles through variety shows and dramas. It's the same playbook as TWICE, scaled to five.

What TWICE has done is essentially inherit the scale and structure of Girls' Generation — nine members, bright and warm image, mass appeal — while avoiding 2NE1's implosion and following the model Red Velvet pioneered: group plus individual, not group versus individual.

The Formula

TWICE's run at year nine points to three things that drive girl group longevity:

Will this formula hold for the 4th-generation groups — NewJeans, aespa, IVE — as they approach their own seven-year mark? It's too early to say. NewJeans debuted in 2022 and are only in year four. aespa (2020) are in year six. Whether they can clear the seven-year wall is a question we'll have an answer to in two or three years.

The THIS IS FOR World Tour wraps on June 4, 2026, at The O2 in London. 78 cities, hundreds of thousands of fans, hundreds of millions in revenue. But the number that matters most isn't any of those — it's that TWICE is still here, still growing, still all nine of them, in a genre where that almost never happens.

Their 10th anniversary isn't an endpoint. It looks a lot more like a starting line.

Sources

- TWICE album sales annually 2024 | Statista
- This Is For World Tour - Wikipedia
- TWICE exceeds 20 million total album sales since debut | allkpop
- From BTS To TWICE: 6 K-pop Groups That Renewed Their Contracts As A Full Group
- Why K-pop girl groups can't stand the test of time - The Jakarta Post
- Longevity of K-pop Idol Groups: Forever or Never? – Seoulbeats