Finally, 2 New K-Pop Albums Have Made It Onto The Billboard World Albums Chart

While new K-Pop songs often appear each week on the Billboard World Digital Song Sales chart, such as the 5 new ones that debuted on the chart this week, it’s not as common for new K-Pop music to make it onto the Billboard World Albums chart.

In fact, only 3 K-Pop albums have made their first debut onto the list so far this year, compared to 22 K-Pop songs that have been newly added to the World Digital Song Sales chart in 2021.

Similar to the World Digital Song Sales chart, the World Albums chart is a weekly chart that ranks the best-selling international albums in the United States as of that week.

Unlike the singles chart, however, the albums chart also changes less drastically in general, so having not one but two new K-Pop albums debut on the chart in a single week is not very common!

The highest-charting new album by a K-Pop artist is actually TXT‘s latest Japanese album, Still Dreaming! It’s even less common for Japanese albums by K-Pop artists to make high sales in the U.S., so this is even more impressive than it already would be. It’s ranked at #4 for its debut week on the chart, which is really high on the list of 15 albums!

TXT has had 5 albums rank on the chart overall, with both their debut album, The Dream Chapter: Star, and their latest Korean-language album, Minisode1: Blue Hour, both peaking at #1.

The second new K-Pop album to debut this week is Chungha‘s first full-length studio album, Querencia. While the album’s release was sadly delayed because of the soloist contracting COVID-19, it was well worth the wait, and clearly well-received since it ended up on this chart!

It’s ranked at #10 for its debut, and is Chungha’s third album to make it onto this list, with Offset reaching a peak of #13 in 2018 and Flourishing reaching a peak of #7 in 2019.

Along with these two albums, 11 of the other albums ranked on the chart this week are in the K-Pop genre, making a total of 13 out of the 15 albums on the list.

BTS, as is often the case, reigns supreme with 7 total albums on the chart: BE at #1 (with 13 weeks on the chart); Map of the Soul: 7 at #2 (with 52 weeks on the chart); Love Yourself: Answer at #5 (130 weeks on the chart); Love Yourself: Tear at #6 (131 weeks); Map of the Soul: Persona at #8 (96 weeks); Skool Luv Affair at #11 (19 weeks); and Love Yourself: Her at #14 (115 weeks).

The four other K-Pop albums ranked on the chart this week are BLACKPINK‘s The Album at #3 (with 20 weeks on the chart); NCT‘s Resonance Pt. 1 at #7 (19 weeks on the chart); NCT 127‘s Neo Zone at #12 (46 weeks); and SuperM‘s Super One at #13 (21 weeks).

Congratulations to all the artists who made it onto the Billboard World Albums chart this week!