LE SSERAFIM will open COUNTDOWN JAPAN 26/27, returning to Japan’s year-end festival for a second straight year. According to Sports Kyunghyang, the group is the first K-pop act to be invited to the festival in two consecutive years.
The festival runs for five days at Makuhari Messe in Chiba, on December 26-27 and December 29-31. LE SSERAFIM — Kim Chaewon, Sakura, Huh Yunjin, Kazuha, and Hong Eunchae — will take the stage on December 26, the first day, opening the event.
COUNTDOWN JAPAN began in 2003 and is described in the report as Japan’s largest year-end indoor festival, featuring artists who have had a major year. A second consecutive invitation therefore puts LE SSERAFIM in a select position among the festival’s lineup, and the report frames the group as having its strongest year yet in Japan.
That momentum is visible in the group’s recent Japanese activity. In August, LE SSERAFIM performed at SUMMER SONIC 2026, Japan’s largest music festival, where the report praised their command of the stage. Their second album, “PUREFLOW pt.1,” shipped more than 100,000 copies in Japan and earned a Gold certification from the Recording Industry Association of Japan in August 2026.
The certification also set the group apart within its generation: the report notes that LE SSERAFIM is the only fourth-generation K-pop girl group to earn that certification for six consecutive works with Korean-language albums.
Streaming numbers point in the same direction. The album’s title track, “BOOMPALA,” had passed 100,038,193 streams on Spotify as of October 25, about five months after its release on May 22. It is the group’s 18th song to reach 100 million streams on the platform.
The report did not quote a separate statement from the group or its agency about the festival booking. What it does lay out is a crowded year-end schedule around it: LE SSERAFIM will play Kyocera Dome Osaka on December 19-20, roughly a year after their Tokyo Dome debut last November, before closing the year at COUNTDOWN JAPAN.
The timing also follows a busy tour stretch. The group wrapped its “2026 LE SSERAFIM TOUR ‘PUREFLOW’ IN UK & EUROPE” in Germany on October 26 local time, and its Asia tour begins in Macau on November 7-8. The Countdown Japan date caps that run, giving the group a festival stage to end a year built on touring, a Dome return, and record certifications in Japan.
