Mnet, Republic Launch Global K-Pop Girl Group
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- Mnet and Republic Collective are partnering on "Girls Planet 2027," with Republic handling production through U.S. promotions and global rollout for a 2027 debut.
- The project sits inside CJ ENM's Music Creative eco-System (MCS), the same framework that launched Kep1er via Girls Planet 999 in 2021 and Alpha Drive One via Boys II Planet in September 2025.
- Alpha Drive One's debut album "Euphoria," released January 2026 and led by title track "Freak Alarm," sold more than 1.44 million copies — the second-highest-selling debut album in K-pop history.
- Mnet Plus opened online applications May 1 and has already received more than 36,000 submissions, a record for Mnet's audition series, with the Americas accounting for nearly a third of all applicants.
- Applications are accepted in Korean, English, Japanese, Chinese, and Spanish, and remain open to independent trainees, agency trainees, and debuted artists born before January 1, 2013.
- Large-scale on-site auditions are scheduled for KCON LA 2026 from August 14–16 in downtown Los Angeles, with additional details to be announced.
- Harry H.K. Shin, Head of Music Entertainment at CJ ENM, said the partnership aims to find talent "from every corner of the world" and introduce them to global audiences.
Why it matters: Republic Collective is now plugged into CJ ENM's MCS production engine, inheriting a pipeline whose last two outputs moved 1.44M debut copies and attracted 26 million fan votes across 223 regions. For CJ ENM, Republic's U.S. label infrastructure de-risks the Western rollout that has historically been the hardest leg of any K-pop girl group launch.
