BTS makes Billboard history: ARIRANG is now the longest-running No. 1 group album in over a decade

When BTS dropped ARIRANG after nearly four years away, the numbers were always going to be big. What nobody quite expected was that they would keep coming. Three consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 is a number that sounds normal on paper, but in today’s music landscape, where streaming surges fade fast and chart momentum is hard to hold, it means a great deal more than that. The last group album to pull this off was Mumford and Sons’ Babel in 2013, which went on to win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Now that belongs to ARIRANG. ARIRANG opened with 641,000 equivalent album units in the United States during its debut tracking week, making it the largest opening week of 2026 so far. In its second week, the album earned 187,000 equivalent album units, a 71% decline from debut, but still enough to hold No. 1 on the Billboard 200. Also Read: Exclusive | ‘Shah Rukh Khan brought a lot of vulnerability to his performance’: Maneesh Sharma on 10 years of Fan ARIRANG is now officially the longest-running K-pop No. 1 album in Billboard 200 history, surpassing the record previously held by the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack. The album’s lead track “Swim” debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, making BTS the first group to debut an album and a song atop the Billboard 200 and Hot 100 simultaneously more than once. They first did it in 2020 with “Life Goes On.” BTS became the first act to claim the entire top 10 and top 13 positions simultaneously. On the Billboard Global 200, BTS songs occupied the top nine spots at the same time. On streaming, “Swim” held No. 1 on the Daily Global Spotify Chart for 23 consecutive days since the album’s release. All 13 tracks on ARIRANG made it onto the Hot 100, with the exception of “No. 29,” a bell interlude. ARIRANG is BTS’ return after their mandatory military service in South Korea, a break that stretched close to four years. The album was produced by Bang Si-Hyuk, the founder and chairman of HYBE, who also assembled the group at debut over a decade ago. Alongside the chart run, BTS launched the ARIRANG World Tour in Goyang, South Korea, opening with a 23-song setlist that mixes new material with some of their most well-known earlier work. Click here to follow Screen Digital on YouTube and stay updated with the latest from the world of cinema.