BLACKPINK is a South Korean girl group formed by YG Entertainment, made up of four members: Jisoo, Jennie, Rosé and Lisa. The lineup was assembled after years of individual trainee preparation, with each member recruited and coached separately before their names were revealed one by one between June 1 and June 22, 2016, ahead of the group’s official announcement on June 29, 2016. Jisoo and Jennie are South Korean, Rosé was born in New Zealand and raised in Melbourne, Australia, and Lisa is from Buriram, Thailand, making BLACKPINK one of the most internationally diverse major K-pop acts. YG positioned the group as the successor to its earlier girl group 2NE1, the first new girl group the label had introduced in seven years, according to Billboard’s retrospective on the group’s history-making run.

BLACKPINK debuted on August 8, 2016, with the single album “Square One,” led by the tracks “Whistle” and “Boombayah.” Both songs simultaneously topped Billboard’s World Digital Songs chart, an unusually fast breakthrough for a new act, while “Whistle” also debuted at number one on South Korea’s Gaon Digital Chart. The group won its first domestic music show trophy just two weeks after debut and swept multiple rookie-of-the-year honors by the end of 2016. Momentum continued into 2017 with “Playing with Fire” and “As If It’s Your Last,” which extended the group’s early run of chart-topping digital singles and helped build a fast-growing international fanbase, known as Blinks, well before BLACKPINK released a full-length studio album.

BLACKPINK’s turning point on the world stage came at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, where the group became the first K-pop girl group to perform, in 2019. Four years later, they returned as one of the festival’s three official headliners in 2023, alongside Bad Bunny and Frank Ocean, making them the first Asian act to headline Coachella. Billboard called the set “historic and memorable,” noting that the four members “shined with their own personalities” while performing as a unit. The headlining slot coincided with a broader commercial breakout for the group, whose 2022 album “Born Pink” became their first number-one album on the Billboard 200 and whose accompanying tour went on to break long-standing box-office records previously held by acts including the Spice Girls.

BLACKPINK holds a wide array of chart and streaming records. “Born Pink” debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 in October 2022, making BLACKPINK the first Korean girl group, and the first all-female group of any nationality, to top that chart since 2008. On streaming platforms, Guinness World Records has recognized BLACKPINK as the most-streamed female group in Spotify history, and the group’s YouTube channel separately became the most-subscribed and most-viewed channel ever operated by a music group. Touring records followed the same pattern: the Born Pink World Tour, which ran from 2022 into 2023, is documented as the highest-grossing tour ever by a vocal group and by an Asian act, with a final gross reported at more than $330 million from 66 sold-out shows across 22 countries, according to tour data compiled on Wikipedia, surpassing the previous girl-group touring record set by the Spice Girls.

Beyond fan-facing metrics, BLACKPINK has become a fixture on industry power rankings. In Forbes Korea’s 2026 Power Celebrity 40 list, BLACKPINK placed second among all Korean celebrities, behind only BTS as a collective act, with reported earnings of roughly 151.8 billion won, or about $101.2 million for the year, ranking as the top all-female act on the list. The group has also amassed more than a dozen Guinness World Records tied to streaming, YouTube growth and touring, and its members are routinely among the most searched and most followed entertainers globally on social platforms, a level of mainstream and industry recognition that few girl groups from any country have matched.

As a group, BLACKPINK has fronted campaigns for brands including Samsung, whose Galaxy devices were prominently featured in the “Kill This Love” music video and subsequent advertising, along with Pepsi, Adidas, Kia and Sprite Korea, among dozens of other partners across categories from beauty to mobile gaming. Individually, the members hold some of the most prominent luxury ambassadorships in fashion: Jennie has represented Chanel since 2019, Lisa is a global ambassador for Celine and Bulgari, Rosé became the first-ever global ambassador for Yves Saint Laurent in the brand’s history, and Jisoo has served as an ambassador for Dior and Cartier. According to the South China Morning Post, the four members were each courted individually by rival luxury houses because of their distinct personal styles, a dynamic that has made BLACKPINK unusually valuable to fashion marketers compared with acts where a single member typically fronts all brand work.

BLACKPINK’s commercial structure changed significantly in late 2023. In December of that year, all four members renewed their contract with YG Entertainment to continue as BLACKPINK, but they chose not to renew separate solo contracts with the label, opting instead to build independent business structures around their individual activities, according to Variety’s reporting on the decision. Jennie, Jisoo and Lisa each went on to establish their own personal management ventures, while Rosé signed her solo deal with The Black Label, the YG-affiliated label run by producer Teddy Park. That restructuring gave the members direct ownership stakes in their individual income for the first time, on top of their continuing share of group earnings from albums, touring and licensing, and it has been closely watched by investors, with YG Entertainment’s own share price moving sharply on news tied to BLACKPINK’s contract status and comeback plans.

BLACKPINK as a group does not own or disclose shared real estate, and YG Entertainment does not publish group-level asset figures. What is documented are individual property purchases by members, which are widely reported in South Korean business media given the scale of the transactions. Jennie has been reported to have purchased a commercial building in Seoul’s Yongsan district for roughly 20 billion won, or about $15 million, in an all-cash deal, according to the Korea Times, in addition to an earlier apartment purchase in the city’s Hannam-dong neighborhood. Lisa owns a two-story villa in Seoul’s Seongbuk-dong district, an area known for housing foreign ambassadors and other South Korean celebrities, reported to be worth roughly 7.5 billion won, or about $5.5 million, according to Gulf News. These individual holdings are the clearest publicly documented evidence of the group’s members converting their earnings into fixed assets, even though no consolidated “BLACKPINK” property portfolio exists in public records.