ZEROBASEONE’s KCON LA Breakthrough and ‘Kaiki LOVE’ Chart Sweep: The Phoenix Strategy Keeps Paying Off
When we last checked in on the ZEROBASEONE/AND2BLE split back in July, the story was still largely theoretical: a bold rebrand, a promising Japanese rollout announcement, and a rival group putting up strong debut numbers.
Three months on, the theory has become a track record. August 2026 delivered the two biggest proof points yet that WakeOne’s five-member relaunch of ZEROBASEONE isn’t just surviving the “Boys Planet curse” — it’s actively rewriting it, one chart run and one arena show at a time.
KCON LA 2026: The Arena Test, Passed
Image used for editorial and commentary purposes only. All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.
The July article flagged KCON LA 2026 as the “August litmus test” for whether international audiences would embrace the OT5 configuration as a legitimate headliner rather than an incomplete unit.
That test is now behind them, and the results were about as decisive as WakeOne could have hoped for.
Held August 14–16 at the Los Angeles Convention Center and Crypto.com Arena, KCON LA 2026 placed ZEROBASEONE alongside NCT 127 and Tomorrow X Together as one of the festival’s three headlining acts. ZB1 — now permanently five: Sung Han-bin, Kim Ji-woong, Seok Matthew, Kim Tae-rae, and Park Gun-wook — took the Day 2 headliner slot, and used it to debut something new rather than simply lean on the back catalog.
The group delivered the world-premiere live performance of “Exotic,” a track from their sixth mini-album “Ascend-” that hadn’t yet been performed on any stage, dressed in custom outfits created through a collaboration with Swarovski.
It was the kind of moment built specifically for a room full of cameras and international press, and by most accounts it landed: the crystal-heavy costuming amplified a stage presence the group has spent all year re-engineering for a five-person formation, and the live reaction to “Exotic” was singled out as a highlight of the night.
Image used for editorial and commentary purposes only. All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.
Just as important as the flash was the substance underneath it. The set threaded in exactly the kind of unit and solo content that signals a group confident in its individual members, not just its collective brand.
Han-bin, Matthew, and Gun-wook teamed up for a cover of Justin Timberlake’s “SexyBack” — a knowing nod to the R&B-and-2000s-dance-pop direction “Ascend-” had already leaned into.
Ji-woong took a solo spotlight moment with his own song “CLOSER,” while Tae-rae delivered a personal, stripped-down rendition of IU’s “Love Wins All.”
None of that reads like a group padding a setlist to fill time; it reads like five people who each know exactly what they bring to the stage.
For a group whose biggest open question three months ago was whether a nine-to-five reduction would read as diminished, KCON LA answered clearly: the smaller unit isn’t a smaller show.
If anything, the tighter formation gave the individual members more room to be seen, which is precisely the “premium, boutique” identity leader Sung Han-bin described back in the “Ascend-” press run.
‘Kaiki LOVE’: A Japanese Chart Double-Crown
If KCON LA was about proving artistic and performative credibility, ZEROBASEONE’s second Japanese EP was about proving something more concrete: that the five-member lineup still moves units and dominates charts the way the nine-member version once did.
“回帰LOVE” (“Kaiki LOVE,” meaning roughly “circling back to you”) arrived August 19 as ZEROBASEONE’s first new Japanese material in about ten months, following last October’s special EP “ICONIK.”
The three-track release leans into a nostalgic, “that summer” visual concept, and pairs the group with an unexpected collaborator: a member of the acclaimed Japanese piano-trio band Omoinotake co-created the title track, “Existence” (イグジステンス), giving the song a cross-cultural pedigree that Japanese music press picked up on immediately.
The EP rounds out with the Y2K-and-R&B-leaning original “Aphrodite” and a Japanese-language version of “TOP 5,” bridging the Korean and Japanese eras of the group’s 2026 output.
The commercial response was immediate and, on the numbers, better than “ICONIK.” “Kaiki LOVE” claimed the top spot on Oricon’s Daily Album Ranking on release day and held number one for four consecutive days.
It went on to debut atop Oricon’s Weekly Album Ranking with roughly 91,000 copies sold in its first week, and separately topped Billboard Japan’s “Top Albums Sales” chart with 153,306 units — outselling second-place finisher TREASURE’s “NEW WAV” by more than double.
Tower Records’ all-store album chart gave the EP a third crown for the same tracking period. Oricon later confirmed a fourth honor: the top spot on its combined weekly album ranking, which folds in streaming and download activity alongside physical sales.
The release was punctuated by a piece of pure fan-service theater: the day after the EP dropped, ZEROBASEONE staged an unannounced guerrilla live show in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Kabukicho Cinecity Square.
Roughly 4,000 fans showed up in under two hours of the announcement going out — a striking demonstration of how quickly the group’s Japanese fanbase mobilizes, even with barely any lead time.
Taken together with the group’s earlier record — six consecutive million-selling Korean releases and, as of May, more than 10 million cumulative album sales, a first for any fifth-generation K-pop act — “Kaiki LOVE” confirms that the OT5 configuration isn’t just holding onto the group’s core Korean fanbase. It’s actively growing the Japanese side of the business too.
AND2BLE: Still the Perfect Counterweight
Nothing about ZEROBASEONE’s summer run has come at AND2BLE’s expense, which was the whole point of the “split where nobody loses” framing in July — and that continues to hold.
Yuehua’s five-piece, built around former ZB1 members Zhang Hao, Ricky, Kim Gyu-vin, and Han Yu-jin alongside former Evnne vocalist Yoo Seung-eon, spent the summer consolidating rather than chasing a second comeback, and the strategy looks deliberate rather than cautious.
Following their May 26 debut with “Sequence 01: Curiosity” and its blockbuster first-week numbers, AND2BLE moved straight into a “2026 AND2BLE SHOW CONCERT: Welcome to Qurious” arena run — an unusually large-scale touring commitment for a group barely out of the gate.
The concert opened at Seoul’s Jamsil Indoor Stadium in June before continuing across Yokohama, Kobe, and Macau through late July, giving the group direct, repeated stage time with fans across multiple Asian markets within its first two months of existence.
Rather than rush a second mini-album, AND2BLE spent August extending the shelf life of its debut era: on August 11, the group released a “Happy &” special video, spotlighting the closing track from “Sequence 01: Curiosity” well after the initial promotional cycle had wrapped.
It’s a smaller move than ZB1’s Japanese chart sweep, but it fits the pattern the two camps have settled into — WakeOne pushing ZEROBASEONE through rapid-fire, high-visibility releases across two markets simultaneously, while Yuehua builds AND2BLE’s foundation more gradually through touring and sustained content before committing to the next comeback cycle.
What This Means Going Into Fall
The picture that’s emerged since July is remarkably close to the “Phoenix Strategy” framing from our last piece, just with real data behind it now instead of a hypothesis.
ZEROBASEONE has answered the two biggest open questions about its five-member relaunch: yes, the group can headline an American arena stage and be received as a premium act rather than a diminished one, and yes, the reduced lineup can still move Japanese charts at a rate that matches or exceeds its nine-member era.
AND2BLE, for its part, has proven its debut wasn’t a fluke by converting a strong first week into a genuine touring business across four cities in two months.
In Conclusion :
With “Kaiki LOVE” promotions likely to continue into September and AND2BLE expected to build toward its next comeback after wrapping its debut-era touring cycle, the two camps look set to keep operating on parallel, non-competing tracks rather than converging into any kind of direct rivalry.
For a story that began with an unusually clean and amicable group split, that’s precisely the outcome both agencies were betting on — and so far, both bets are paying off.