Nine years after becoming one of K-pop’s only mixed-gender groups ever, KARD are going their separate ways. On July 6, DSPmedia posted a formal statement confirming the group’s disbandment, announcing that their first full-length studio album and a subsequent world tour will serve as their farewell. The announcement came as a shock to HIDDEN KARDs — the group’s fandom — not only for the news itself but for its timing: KARD are currently mid-tour.
The Official Statement About KARD Disbanding
The agency’s statement was brief and to the point. “After careful and thoughtful discussions with all four members, we have mutually agreed that this album and tour will mark the conclusion of KARD’s journey as a group,” it read. “The members have poured their hearts into preparing this album and tour, and we sincerely hope these final activities will become cherished memories for HIDDEN KARD. We kindly ask for your continued love and support until the very end as KARD shares one final chapter with you in the way only they can.”w
KARD’s Final Album — Where To Now? (Part.2): NOWHERE
The group’s first and final full-length studio album, somewhat appropriately titled Where To Now? (Part.2): NOWHERE, releases on July 28, 2026 at 6pm KST on global streaming platforms. The album completes the two-part Where To Now? project. While the first release posed an open-ended question about the group’s future, NOWHERE is presented as the closing chapter, reflecting on the experiences and artistic growth accumulated over nearly a decade together.
The promotional poster features an electric blue image set against weathered concrete and confetti. Considering that KARD debuted in 2017 and released exclusively mini albums and EPs throughout their nine year career makes its timing as a farewell record all the more striking.
The DRIFT World Tour — A Final Goodbye Across Three Continents
KARD are not waiting for the album to complete their touring commitments. The DRIFT World Tour is currently underway, with Tokyo dates having kicked off on July 4. The European leg follows in September, covering Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Bulgaria. The farewell tour also includes Jakarta and other Asian markets, spanning three continents.
Who KARD Are
KARD debuted under DSP Media in 2017 as a four-member mixed-gender group comprising BM, J.Seph, Somin, and Jiwoo, an unusual configuration in an industry with either only boy groups or girls groups.
K-pop wasn’t always this segregated by gender. In fact, mixed-gender groups like Koyote, Cool and Space A were a natural part of Korean pop in the 1990s, achieving significant domestic success with both male and female members. However, the explosion of the idol system worldwide, along with specific audience targeting and societal taboos about mixed gender co-habitation, for example, led in part to more rigidly enforced single gender structures and a suffusion of single gender groups and artists.
KARD’s debut coincided with a period of international curiosity about K-pop’s possibilities; breakthrough acts like BTS were just picking up steam globally after ‘Blood, Sweat and Tears’ and their album Love Yourself: Tear had become the first K-pop album to reach the top 10 of the Billboard 200. “Honestly, at first when I was told that I was going to be in a co-ed group I was against the idea because of stigma and the difficulties that we’d have to overcome,” member J.Seph told Billboard in 2018. ”“But from the moment I began facing the idea, I decided to overcome those thoughts and I instead became eager to show people that a co-ed group can exist as a team and there are no differences to any other bands.”
KARD became one of the genre’s more idiosyncratic success stories; a group that toured Latin America early and extensively, built a devoted fanbase far outside Korea’s typical K-pop markets and maintained an aesthetic and sound — deep house, dance pop, a deliberate sensuality — albeit at some distance from the genre’s dominant aesthetics. They were never the biggest K-pop act of their generation, but they were among the most consistently themselves, and although there still exists co-ed groups like Triple Seven and AllDayProject that came after them, KARD’s disbandment is definitely the end of an experimental era.
