MottoITZY's twelfth mini album, released on 18 May 2026 with eight songs, five of them member solo tracks. IZM and Billboard both wrote about it.
Motto is ITZY’s twelfth mini album, released on 18 May 2026. It came six months after TUNNEL VISION of November 2025 and carries eight songs, led by the title track of the same name. The album introduction glosses the word motto as the phrase or creed a person lives and works by, and gives the record’s own as “I choose myself”.
The same text describes the title track as a song built on a fresh, current melody, with a deep reverb effect and long, quiet pad synths sitting together. Five of the eight songs are solo tracks, one per member, first performed on the individual stages of the TUNNEL VISION world tour that opened early in 2026. The Korea Herald reported that on release day Lia said she hoped listeners would feel the message of choosing yourself rather than doubting yourself.
IZM reviewed the title track on 28 May 2026. Han Seong-hyeon wrote that the group “did not let expectations down, and did not take an overly obvious route either”, and on the arrangement that it “mixes the house rhythm that was a staple of K-pop in the first quarter of 2026 with the disco guitar heard on Yuna’s solo track ‘Ice cream’, for a recipe that is familiar and yet slightly different”.
Billboard included the record among the 25 K-pop albums it picked from the first half of 2026, published on 20 July 2026. Jeff Benjamin named the title track and ‘Glitch’ as well-made group songs, and wrote that each member recorded a solo song of her own, which produced some unexpected turns of genre.
Of the title track, Han Seong-hyeon wrote that it “is all the sweeter for knowing how long the way round was”. The album introduction says the choreography was made by HAEINYSS and YURI and turns on large movements suited to early summer; the pair also worked on the performance of ‘THAT’S A NO NO’, a song from the second mini album that returned to the stage on the 2026 world tour.
The second track, ‘Glitch’, is the one Jeff Benjamin named beside the title track. The album introduction takes the glitch met in shards of broken pixels and warped time and space as a metaphor, and says the song carries the message that a way of being that is different rather than wrong is what makes a person shine. The third, ‘you And I’, is described in the same text as a song about the confusion a perfectly logical artificial intelligence meets when it faces love.
Jeff Benjamin named three of the five solo tracks. He called Lia’s ‘Asylum’ a pop-rock crossover cut and Chaeryeong’s ‘Undefined’ a jazz-R&B-pop hybrid, and wrote that ‘Pocket’ lets Yeji dive into Latin pop. The album introduction describes ‘Pocket’ as a song that reads the moment of drawing a chosen person into one’s own world as a metaphor of space. The other two are Ryujin’s ‘LOOK’ and Yuna’s ‘Tangerine’.
On Circle Chart’s weekly album chart for week 21 of 2026 (17 to 23 May), Motto placed fourth with 225,196 copies. The POCA edition charted separately the same week, seventh with 97,252 copies.
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Yuna of ITZY plays Yoon Cho-i, an actress who became a rising star on debut, in tvN's My Bias, My Boss, which premiered on 3 August 2026. It is her second drama, seven months after her first role as Hong Jang-mi, sister of Park Shin-hye's Hong Geum-bo, in Undercover Miss Hong from 17 January.
Yuna of ITZY made her solo debut on 23 March 2026 with her first mini album Ice Cream, seven years after the group's debut and second among ITZY members after Yeji. The four tracks, what she said at the showcase, the first-day charts and the Infinix ambassadorship of the 3rd, in date order.
ITZY's mini album Motto, released on 18 May 2026, carries one solo track per member; Yuna's is the eighth track, 'Tangerine', first performed on her tour stage in February and on a record three months later. In a release-day Q&A, Yuna named the fandom MIDZY as the motto of the comeback.
