Long touted as a badge of honor in both fan wars and press releases, the concept of going “global” has been an arguably unrealized goal for much of the K-pop industry prior to 2025. Yet the past 12 months have proven to be the scene’s most expansive year yet, reaching new heights and mainstream milestones.

For observers both in and outside of the K-pop orbit, that expansion was recognized as a seismic creative shift. In an apt year-end review for The New York Times, pop critic Jon Caramanica wrote that “K-pop is an influence, a starting point, but perhaps not a destination.” He noted how projects like ROSÉ and Bruno Mars‘ record-breaking “APT.” exemplified crossover collaborations as “an indicator of widening acceptance and also increased tolerance for musical risk,” while K-adjacent projects like KPop Demon Hunters and KATSEYE signal that the genre has reached a stage where it “needs new oxygen to thrive.”

And the data shows those risks have breathed some life-affirming excitement into K-pop with effects that can be felt for years to come: a K-pop-based animated blockbuster movie and soundtrack placed multiple tracks across the Billboard Hot 100 and Global 200 for weeks while competing in major awards races; new partnerships and deals saw veteran and newcomer acts earning new chart feats; tours earned unprecedented grosses across the world; and new localized K-pop ecosystems formed in markets far from Seoul.

Indeed, 2025 wasn’t about K-pop “arriving.” It was about K-pop scaling in a way that the rest of the world can’t help but take notice. The model proved it could be exported, localized, iterated, and — perhaps most crucially — felt on both a commercial and creative level.

Go through more than a dozen moments that show how 2025 truly became a global sensation this year.