KATSEYE Is Down to Four Members Mid-Tour — Here’s How WILD’s Historic Chart Run Held Up Anyway
KATSEYE’s last few months have been a study in contrast. On paper, the group is having the biggest commercial run of its career — a first-ever Billboard 200 No. 1, a historic Hot 100 sweep, and a sold-out world tour that just kept adding dates.
Off paper, the group has quietly become something different than the six-member act that built that momentum in the first place.
Two members are currently on indefinite hiatus, and when the Wildworld Tour launched in Dublin earlier this month, KATSEYE took the stage as a foursome.
Here’s a full update on where things stand — the chart numbers, the lineup situation, and how the tour’s opening night actually went.
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WILD’s Chart Run, in Full
Back in late August, we covered the record-setting debut of WILD, KATSEYE’s third EP: a No. 1 bow on the Billboard 200 with 170,000 equivalent album units, the biggest single week for an all-woman group since Billboard began tracking units in 2015, and a companion feat — four songs charting simultaneously on the Hot 100, alongside the group’s first-ever No. 1 on the Billboard Artist 100.
That debut week has since been followed by a more typical chart trajectory, which is worth tracking for context. In its second week, WILD slipped from No. 1 to No. 6 on the Billboard 200, moving 55,000 units and bringing its cumulative total to roughly 225,000 units since release.
That’s a standard second-week drop for a chart-topping project — most No. 1 debuts see a similar pullback once the initial release-week surge of physical bundles, vinyl variants, and hardcore-fan purchases levels off — but it’s a useful data point for anyone tracking whether WILD‘s success has staying power beyond its opening frame.
Billboard’s own chart-beat team weighed in on the debut shortly after it happened, with senior charts writer Kyle Denis rating the week “a solid 7.5” out of 10 in significance, noting that the jump from Beautiful Chaos‘s No. 4 debut to WILD‘s No. 1 in just two years reads as confirmation that KATSEYE’s fanbase has scaled into a genuine commercial force — not just a viral one.
On the singles side, “Hootie Frutti” remains the breakout of the EP, debuting at No. 31 on the Hot 100 and continuing to draw streaming traffic weeks after release, while “Animal” has kept climbing toward new peaks on both the Hot 100 and the Global 200.
Between the two tracks, plus “Pinky Up” and the group’s “Iconic By Mistake” collaboration with LE SSERAFIM and ILLIT, KATSEYE has now logged five different Hot 100 entries across its catalog — a spread that’s rare for a group two years into its career.
The Lineup News That Changed the Story
While WILD‘s numbers were making headlines, a separate and more serious story was developing inside the group. In early August — just one day before KATSEYE’s headlining set at the Head in the Clouds festival at the Rose Bowl — member Sophia Laforteza announced she was taking a temporary hiatus to prioritize her mental health.
The announcement wasn’t entirely out of nowhere. Laforteza had already sat out the group’s July 30 performance at Iowa’s Hinterland Music Festival due to illness and was absent from the August 4 premiere of the Katseye: Wild Hearts documentary in Los Angeles.
In her own statement, posted to Instagram, she wrote that the decision “wasn’t easy,” adding: “I’m realizing that if I don’t take care of my mind and body now, I won’t be able to keep doing what I love the most for so long.”
A joint statement from HYBE and Geffen — the group’s co-managing labels — said the hiatus followed “thorough consultations with medical professionals” and that Laforteza had been advised to take “dedicated time for extended rest and ongoing care to ensure a full recovery.”
At the time, her participation in the Wildworld Tour was described as something that would be “reassessed in September.”
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Laforteza’s hiatus wasn’t the first. Member Manon Bannerman had already been on her own indefinite break since February 2026, a decision the group’s label described at the time as something arrived at through “open and thoughtful conversations together.”
Bannerman’s absence had already meant KATSEYE spent most of 2026 — including the WILD rollout, its Coachella sets, and several festival dates — performing as a five-piece well before Laforteza’s announcement pushed that number down further.
Both members’ situations remain officially temporary, and the group has been vocal about supporting them publicly. Asked directly about Laforteza and Bannerman during a Today show appearance, member Lara Raj said: “As KATSEYE, it’s so important to us to always prioritize our well-being.
We stand by Sophia and Manon through and through. We ride for them.” The rest of the group — Daniela Avanzini, Megan Skiendiel, and Yoonchae Jeung — echoed the sentiment on camera, with Raj adding a direct message to the two absent members: “We love you guys so much, always.”
A Rocky Road Into Opening Night
If the plan had been to have Laforteza back for the Wildworld Tour launch, that reassessment didn’t land in her favor — she remained absent when the tour opened.
And the road to opening night got bumpier still: just days before the Dublin show, member Megan Skiendiel suffered a sprained ankle, forcing KATSEYE to cancel a scheduled appearance at Olivia Rodrigo’s Daisy Chain Fields festival in Irvine, California, in order to get her healthy enough to perform.
Skiendiel recovered in time. On September 1–2, KATSEYE launched the Wildworld Tour at Dublin’s 3Arena as a four-member act — Avanzini, Jeung, Skiendiel, and Raj — in front of a sold-out crowd for the group’s first-ever Dublin show.
By most accounts, the reduced lineup didn’t hold the show back. One live review described the opening night as moving through 19 songs across three distinct acts, with the four members “filling the 3Arena with an energy far greater than their numbers suggested.”
The set opened with “Hootie Frutti,” performed via a lift entrance, and ran through fan favorites including “Gabriela,” “Pinky Up,” “Internet Girl,” “Touch,” “Mean Girls,” and “Gnarly,” alongside individual dance solos for three of the four performers.
The night also included two live debuts from the WILD EP: “Bel Air” and “Unloveu,” the latter featuring Raj on solo piano.
Fan accounts from the show added some additional texture — including claims that members were asked not to mention Manon by name at soundcheck, and that the show nearly didn’t happen at all due to a member being unwell in the lead-up to doors.
Neither detail has been officially confirmed by the group or its labels, but they underscore just how tightly the production was managed to get opening night on stage at all.
The Tour Itself Keeps Growing
Even with the lineup uncertainty, ticket demand for the Wildworld Tour hasn’t slowed down. The trek was originally announced in May as a 27-show run across Europe and North America, in support of WILD.
After the initial round of shows sold out during presale, KOZ’s partner labels added extra dates in London, Elmont, Los Angeles, and Mexico City, bringing the total to 31 shows across 27 cities and 10 countries. Those additional dates sold out as well.
The tour is scheduled to run from its September 1 Dublin opener through a November 28 close in Mexico City, covering both Europe and North America over roughly three months. Whether Laforteza or Bannerman rejoin the group at any point during that run remains an open question — neither has a confirmed return date, and both hiatuses continue to be described as temporary rather than permanent departures.
What to Watch Next
Two separate storylines are now running in parallel for KATSEYE, and both are worth tracking independently.
On the commercial side, the next few chart cycles will show whether WILD‘s singles — particularly “Hootie Frutti” and “Animal” — can hold their positions on the Hot 100 and Global 200 as the initial release-week attention fades, and whether the EP itself can sustain enough catalog activity to stay inside the Billboard 200’s upper tier heading into the fall.
On the group side, the bigger question is simpler and higher-stakes: how long a four-person KATSEYE can keep touring at this scale, and whether either Laforteza or Bannerman will return to the stage before the Wildworld Tour wraps in November.
For a group whose defining trait over the past two years has been rapid, uninterrupted commercial growth, this is the first real test of what that growth looks like under genuine strain — and, based on Dublin’s opening night, the remaining four members appear determined to answer that question by simply continuing to perform.
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