NCT DREAM

Who are NCT DREAM?

NCT DREAM (엔시티 드림) are a six-member boy group under SM Entertainment and a unit of NCT: Renjun, Jeno, Haechan, Jaemin, Chenle and Jisung. They began with the debut single ‘Chewing Gum’ in August 2016. The Korea Herald reported that the Korean and Chinese music videos went up on 24 August, followed by an M Countdown stage on the 25th and the music-service release on the 27th. Their fandom is called NCTzen.

How the graduation ended

The group did not start in its present shape. According to Xportsnews, NCT DREAM was made up of teenage members who would graduate from the team on turning 20, and on 14 April 2020 SM Entertainment said it was reorganising that system: without graduation, seven members would carry on. Since April 2026 the group has been six.

SM Entertainment said on 20 August 2026 that all six members had renewed their contracts — Haechan in July, the other five in August — on “the deep trust in each other and unwavering affection for the team”. Later that month, on 22 and 23 August, the group held its tenth-anniversary fan meeting The Sweet Dream Hotel in Incheon.

From a first win to the main stadium

According to Xportsnews, NCT DREAM took their first music show win on SBS MTV’s The Show on 14 February 2017 with ‘My First and Last’, the title track of their first single album, The First.

On 8 and 9 September 2022 they held the concert THE DREAM SHOW2 – In A DREAM at Seoul’s Jamsil Olympic Stadium. MK Sports described it as the first solo show NCT DREAM had played at Jamsil’s main stadium, the largest venue in the country, and reported that some 135,000 people watched in person and online combined. According to Edaily, at the 2022 Genie Music Awards at Namdong Gymnasium in Incheon on 8 November that year, they won two grand prizes, Artist of the Year and Album of the Year. Xportsnews called their grand prize at the 32nd Seoul Music Awards on 19 January 2023 their first sole grand prize since debut.

Where to start

The current release is the sixth mini album Beat It Up, out on 17 November 2025. It carries six tracks, two of them — ‘Butterflies’ and ‘Tempo’ — sung by units drawn from the group. The Korea Times reported that it sold about 1.06 million copies by the Sunday after release on Hanteo Chart figures, extending to ten a run of million-selling albums that began with the first full-length album Hot Sauce in 2021.

Four months earlier, on 14 July 2025, the fifth full-length album Go Back To The Future arrived with two title tracks, ‘BTTF’ and ‘Chiller’. The official music videos sit on the SMTOWN channel, and stage films and the group’s own programmes on the NCT DREAM channel.