NCT

Who are NCT?

NCT (엔시티) are a multinational boy group under SM Entertainment. The name is short for Neo Culture Technology. According to Kuki News, SM Entertainment first announced the group at a presentation show at Coex Artium in Seoul on 27 January 2016: new members could join freely, there would be no limit on their number, and teams based in cities around the world would debut one after another under the NCT name.

On 9 April that year the first unit, NCT U, released ‘The 7th Sense’, and SM Entertainment’s newsroom announced the day before that the track and its music video would go up together at midnight. The line-up and the set of units are not fixed — that is the group’s format — so one person can belong to more than one unit.

As of August 2026, NCT has four units and twenty-three members. NCT 127, based in Seoul, has seven: Johnny, Taeyong, Yuta, Doyoung, Jaehyun, Jungwoo and Haechan. NCT DREAM, which started out with a teenage concept, has six: Renjun, Jeno, Haechan, Jaemin, Chenle and Jisung. WayV, which works in the Chinese-speaking market, has five: Kun, Ten, Xiaojun, Hendery and Yangyang. NCT WISH, which joined in 2024, has six: Sion, Riku, Yushi, Jaehee, Ryo and Sakuya. Haechan is a member of both NCT 127 and NCT DREAM.

The fandom is called NCTzen, a compound of NCT and the English word citizen, announced on 12 June 2017 after a fan vote. Czennie was settled on as the nickname for fans in the same broadcast.

Every unit in one place

While each unit releases under its own name, NCT also puts out group albums that bring several units together. The first, NCT 2018 EMPATHY, came out on 14 March 2018, and the second full-length album arrived in two parts, NCT RESONANCE Pt. 1 on 12 October 2020 and Pt. 2 on 23 November. Xportsnews reported that December that the two parts had sold 2,680,920 copies between them, a “double million-seller”. The third full-length album, Universe, followed on 14 December 2021, and the fourth, Golden Age, on 28 August 2023.

Two days before Golden Age came out, the units shared one stage. According to Edaily, NCT NATION : To The World, held at the main stadium of Incheon’s Munhak Stadium on 26 August 2023, was the first offline concert NCT had played as a whole group since debut. The show went on to two Japanese cities. SBS News reported the Osaka dates at Yanmar Stadium Nagai on 9 and 10 September, and Xportsnews the Tokyo dates at Ajinomoto Stadium on the 16th and 17th, writing that every Japanese show sold out and drew 220,000 people in total.

Where to start

The place to start is the debut single, ‘The 7th Sense’. Jaehyun, Mark, Ten, Taeyong and Doyoung sing on it, and the music video is on the SMTOWN channel. Everything released since has come out under a unit’s name, so the unit hubs are where to follow it. Official videos are on the NCT channel and the SMTOWN channel.