KiiiKiii

Who are KiiiKiii?

KiiiKiii (키키) are a five-member girl group from Starship Entertainment: Jiyu, Leesol, Sui, Haum and Kya, in the order the agency lists them. They were Starship’s first new girl group since IVE, and the name works two ways — in Korean, ‘ㅋㅋ’ (pronounced “kiki”) is the internet laugh, roughly “LOL”, and the six i’s stand for the five members plus their fans, whose official club is called TiiiKiii (티키).

The debut

The group pre-released “I Do Me” on 24 February 2025 and debuted exactly a month later, on 24 March, with the mini album Uncut Gem. At the showcase at Blue Square Mastercard Hall in Seoul at 2 p.m. that day, KiiiKiii performed ‘I DO ME’ and ‘BTG’ for the first time, and Nocut News reported that the song they would promote after the debut was ‘BTG’, which breaks down the line between hip-hop and EDM. At the same event Leesol said: “The Gen Z quality we have in mind is a charm that doesn’t fit a set shape.” Haum said she very much wanted to stand on festival stages around the world, and Jiyu said she hoped KiiiKiii would win the rookie award “as KiiiKiii”.

‘I DO ME’ peaked at number three on Melon’s HOT100 and number ten on its TOP100, and reached number one on Spotify’s Viral 50 chart for Korea. The Fact noted that it entered Circle Chart’s monthly ranking at number 16 in March and stayed on it through June, and that the debut album’s first-week sales passed 200,000 copies. On 5 April 2025 the group took its first music-show trophy, on MBC’s Show! Music Core.

The first year’s awards

The rookie award Jiyu had spoken of came at the 34th Seoul Music Awards at Inspire Arena in Incheon on 21 June 2025. At the 2025 The Fact Music Awards in Macau on 20 September the group received ‘Next Leader’, and Jiyu said: “Just like our name, we’ll work hard so that TiiiKiii and the members can all laugh together and show you something great.” At AAA 2025 in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, on 6 December, they won two awards, the rookie award and Best Performance. By the agency’s count the group took seven rookie awards in its debut year, and with Music Video of the Year at the Melon Music Awards for ‘I DO ME’, thirteen trophies in all. At the 40th Golden Disc Awards at the Taipei Dome on 10 January 2026 they received ‘Next Generation’.

The second year

The second mini album, Delulu Pack, came out on 26 January 2026. At that day’s showcase at YES24 Live Hall in Seoul, Jiyu explained: “Delulu is a cheerful internet term shortened from ‘delusional’. We wanted to use the meme to share KiiiKiii’s own happy delusions with our fans.” The title track “404 (New Era)” won three music shows over about four weeks of promotion, and the group followed it with the B-side ‘Delulu’. Sports Kyunghyang reported that in this period KiiiKiii entered the Billboard Global 200 for the first time.

Receiving a main prize at the 35th Seoul Music Awards on 20 June, the group said: “The memory of receiving the rookie award at the Seoul Music Awards last year is still vivid, so it feels new, and we’re very grateful.” On 19 September at Busan Asiad Main Stadium they were named Artist of the Year at the 2026 The Fact Music Awards, a prize decided 60 per cent on album and digital results and 40 per cent by a judging panel.

The third mini album, WhyKiiiKiii (10 August 2026), is led by “Pop Off Pop Off”. In a release Q&A Jiyu said she was proud to bring out a summer song in KiiiKiii’s own colour, and Leesol said she hoped, as the album’s name suggests, that listeners would feel as if they had arrived at a cool resort. What the album sounds like and how it moved on the charts is in the WhyKiiiKiii story.

Stages and ambassadorships

The first fan concert, ‘KiiiKiii FesTiiival’, was held at Blue Square Woori WON Banking Hall in Seoul on 16 and 17 May 2026, and its Japanese edition at Zepp Haneda in Tokyo on 25 October is sold out. In Japan the group played KCON JAPAN 2025, KANSAI COLLECTION 2025 A/W and NHK’s MUSIC EXPO LIVE 2025 at Tokyo Dome, and on 28 March 2026 it appeared at Head In The Clouds Tokyo 2026 at Makuhari Messe in Chiba. On 13 September it opened the 2026 LCK final at KSPO Dome in Seoul, and on 9 and 11 October it performed at half-time of NBA pre-season games in Macau; the members said their first NBA stage since the debut felt like a dream.

The group also holds two ambassadorships. The Seoul Metropolitan Government appointed KiiiKiii ambassadors for ‘Seoul Color’ on 21 January 2026, and their first videos for that year’s colour, Morning Yellow, were shot at N Seoul Tower, Cheonggyecheon and Dongdaemun Design Plaza among other places. On 24 July Seoul’s Gangnam District appointed them its ambassadors for two years, and they said: “It’s a real honour to be ambassadors for Gangnam District, the centre of Seoul and of K-culture, and it feels new to us.”

Where to start

The official KiiiKiii YouTube channel and Starship Entertainment’s STARSHIP channel carry the music videos and performance clips for “I Do Me”, “404 (New Era)” and “Pop Off Pop Off”, and the official website kiiikiii.kr gathers the promotional content released for each comeback.