Global stars set for concerts in Korea amid venue shortage

Poster for Deep Purple's concert at Paradise City in Incheon / Courtesy of Paradise City

A wave of global stars is coming to Korea this year, from hard rock icons to chart-topping rappers, but their arrivals are colliding with a shortage of large-scale concert venues, testing fans’ patience over access.

The latest to join the lineup is Deep Purple, the British rock legends who helped define 1970s hard rock. The band will perform at Incheon’s Paradise City complex on April 18, the first time in 16 years with classic-era members Ian Gillan, Roger Glover and Ian Paice.

The upcoming Deep Purple show will anchor a year-long run of rock and pop heavyweights at Paradise City. The venue will host the Asian Pop Festival on May 30, featuring city-pop pioneer Taeko Onuki of Sugar Babe, followed by U.K. band My Chemical Romance’s return in November.

On May 29, Canadian R&B singer-songwriter Daniel Ceasar will bring his “Son of Spergy” arena tour to KINTEX in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, about two and a half years after his last appearance here.

Canadian R&B singer-songwriter Daniel Caesar / Courtesy of Live Nation Korea

The Grammy-winning artist, known for “Best Part” with H.E.R. and his work on Justin Bieber’s “Peaches,” is returning to tour his critically acclaimed fourth studio album “Son of Spergy,” which reached No. 4 on the Billboard 200. Caesar has been steadily cultivating a Korean fan base through headline shows and a Korean-subtitle lyric video for “Who Knows.”

Another stadium-scale draw is Post Malone, who will perform at Goyang Sports Complex on Oct. 2 as part of his “The BIG Stadium World Tour,” with U.S. hip-hop artist Don Toliver as a special guest.

The rapper-singer, who is known as “Po-seobang” among Korean fans thanks to his relationship with a Korean partner, returns three years after his first solo show in Korea. His latest North American stadium run drew more than 1 million attendees and grossed over $170 million, making it one of 2025’s top tours.

Combined image of Post Malone and a promotional poster for his 2026 world tour, which includes a Seoul show / Courtesy of Live Nation Korea

British electronic duo HONNE, a fixture on Korean streaming charts and playlists, will hold a three-day “HONNE TOUR IN SEOUL” at Lotte Concert Hall from July 16 to 18, marking their return three years after a 2023 show. Their cumulative global streams have surpassed 3 billion on the back of a collaboration with BTS leader RM. The duo celebrated its 10th debut anniversary this year with the release of the digital single “Someone That Loves You,” featuring Izzy Bizu.

Irish rock band Kodaline will also stop in Seoul on Aug. 12 at Olympic Hall as part of its farewell world tour, bidding local fans goodbye with the hits that carried them from talent show runner-up status in 2006 to global recognition through dramas like “Grey’s Anatomy.”

Behind the star-studded calendar, however, lies a shortage of concert venues over which the industry has been sounding the alarm for years. With the Jamsil Baseball Stadium effectively off-limits until around 2031 due to renovation and overlapping baseball use, agencies say they are engaged in competition for mid-sized arenas like KSPO DOME.

The lack of dedicated music venues has also driven more bookings to multi-purpose sports facilities in nearby Gyeonggi and Incheon, including Goyang Sports Complex and Incheon Asiad Main Stadium, which come with trade-offs such as weather disruptions, field protection fees and limited winter usability.

British rock band Coldplay performs during a concert at Goyang Stadium in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province in April 2025. Courtesy of Live Nation Korea

Meanwhile, fans voiced concerns that the scramble is leading to suboptimal choices. KINTEX, where Caesar will perform, is notorious among concertgoers for flat-floor seating and obstructed views, and has previously seen events boycotted by fans.

Music critic Kim Jakka argued that Korea now needs a dedicated 50,000-seat venue, saying the country’s roughly 2 trillion won digital music market, powered by K-pop, “deserves infrastructure to match.”

Pointing to “timid administration,” he said skeptics who insist such a stadium would sit empty “have it backwards.”

“It’s not that we wouldn’t use it; it’s that we can’t because it doesn’t exist — if you built it, BTS and many other artists can easily fill those seats, creating a virtuous cycle, just as Tokyo Dome does by sharing use between sports and concerts.”

Culture critic and music reporter Lim Hee-yun warned Korea should “not just rush to put up 20,000- or 50,000-seat venues,” warning that mega-acts “aren’t coming 365 days a year” and that any new facility must be usable beyond concert days.

He argued that instead of leaving infrastructure like Seoul World Cup Stadium — the only venue in Seoul that can host over 50,000 audiences — idle over turf damage, authorities should study how to improve maintainance and build new spaces as “genuinely multipurpose venues” that people can enjoy year-round both with culture or sports events.