RIIZE debuted in 2023 and now hold four million-selling releases, a genre they named themselves, and a single that reached US Top 40 radio. Here is who the six RIIZE members are, what the 2026 comeback changed, and where the group actually sits in fifth-generation K-pop.
RIIZE is a six-member group under SM Entertainment: Shotaro, Eunseok, Sungchan, Wonbin, Sohee, and Anton. They debuted on September 4, 2023, and three years on they have four releases that each passed a million copies, a genre label they made up for themselves, and a single that sat on an American Top 40 radio chart for three straight weeks. That last item is the unusual one. Very few K-pop acts three years into a career get that far into US mainstream radio, and it is the clearest sign that interest in RIIZE members is no longer coming only from inside K-pop fandom.
Most pages answering the RIIZE members question hand back a roster with heights and blood types. Useful for about thirty seconds. The harder question is why a group this young is already discussed in Korea as an established act rather than a promising one.
Who is actually in RIIZE
Six members, and one former member whose absence still shapes how the lineup reads.
- Shotaro, dancer, from Yokohama. He debuted in NCT in 2020 before moving over.
- Sungchan, rapper, also a former NCT member. SM announced both transfers in May 2023, before the group even had a name.
- Wonbin, center and vocalist, and the face of most of the group's fashion work.
- Sohee, main vocalist.
- Eunseok, visual, introduced through SM Rookies in 2022.
- Anton, the maknae, born in Boston and raised in New Jersey. He plays cello and produces, and his parents are the composer Yoon Sang and the actress Shim Hye-jin.
The seventh, Seunghan, stopped promoting in November 2023 after old photos of him circulated online. SM said in October 2024 that he would rejoin, reversed the decision two days later following heavy backlash from Korean fans, and he left the group. International fans pushed back hard in the other direction, and some overseas K-pop retailers stopped restocking RIIZE releases for a stretch. It is the most contentious episode in the group's short history, and it is why every current roster says six.
The genre they named for themselves
SM introduced RIIZE with a term that does not exist anywhere else: emotional pop. The idea is songs drawn from ordinary experience and told close to the moment they happen, rather than the elaborate fictional universes SM built around EXO and aespa.
In practice that has meant an unusually wide catalogue for a group this new. Their second EP opens with an alternative rock track built on rough guitar and straight drums, drops into R&B hip hop two songs later, and closes on synth funk. A concept that loose could easily read as no concept at all. What holds it together is that the group performs everything as though the emotion is the point and the genre is only the delivery.
What the 2026 comeback actually did
The RIIZE comeback that changed the picture arrived on June 15, 2026. The second EP, II, moved more than a million copies in four days and became their fourth million-seller, after the debut single album, the first EP, and the 2025 studio album ODYSSEY.
The lead single, "Do Your Dance", did something the sales figures do not capture. Its point choreography follows one line of the lyric, head, hips, shoulders, toes, which made it trivially easy to copy. Short-form content tied to the song passed a hundred million views on TikTok within three weeks, and the challenge pulled in Korean artists well outside the group's own generation, including Changmin of TVXQ and both Chanyeol and Kai of EXO. In August the song entered Mediabase's US Top 40 radio chart at No. 40, the only K-pop entry that week, and stayed on it for three weeks.
At home the group spent the summer in the ordinary rhythm of a Korean act at this level: variety television, brand campaigns, and a two-night third-anniversary fan meeting at Incheon's INSPIRE Arena on September 12 and 13. At the end of the first night they announced the next RIIZE comeback themselves, a digital single on October 26, followed by a second full album, EMOTIION, in spring 2027.
Where they sit in the fifth generation
Fifth-generation K-pop is a loose label for groups that debuted from roughly 2023 onward, and RIIZE arrived at the front of it. Korean outlets were calling them a monster rookie, 괴물 신인, before a single song was out. Some of that was inheritance. They were the first new SM boy group since NCT in 2016, launched under the company's restructured SM 3.0 plan, and two of the six had already debuted once.
That last detail is genuinely unusual. K-pop groups almost always debut as a clean slate. Putting two members with an NCT history into a rookie lineup gave RIIZE a built-in audience and, more awkwardly, a comparison they could not avoid.
What separates them from most of their generation is less about concept than about balance. Plenty of fifth-generation groups lead with worldbuilding or with a hard genre identity. RIIZE lead with performance and with songs written to be legible on first listen. It is a more conservative bet, and it happens to travel well.
The commercial side reflects the same read. Louis Vuitton named the group house ambassadors in December 2023, three months after debut, which is early even by K-pop standards, and the endorsement list since then has run from Korean fashion platforms to Fanta. Brands sign those deals when they expect a group to still matter in three years.
What would have to happen next
A radio entry at No. 40 is a foothold, not a breakthrough. The honest read of RIIZE in late 2026 is a group with a solid commercial base in Korea and Japan, a working presence in Southeast Asia and Latin America after their first world tour and a March run through the South American Lollapalooza festivals, and an early, unproven position in the United States.
EMOTIION will be the test. Second full albums are where K-pop groups either consolidate an identity or start chasing whatever worked last. The most telling thing about RIIZE right now is that they announced that album a year out, on a fan-meeting stage, before anyone thought to ask.
