Lee Jun Young & IVE’s Jang Wonyoung to Host ‘2025 Music Bank Global Festival in Japan’ at Tokyo National Stadium
KBS has confirmed that actor-singer Lee Jun Young and IVE’s Jang Wonyoung will co-host the ‘2025 Music Bank Global Festival in Japan’ (hereafter ‘Music Bank Japan 2025’). The year-end festival is scheduled to take place on December 13–14, 2025 at Tokyo National Stadium, marking the first-ever K-Pop joint concert to be held at the venue. Korean media report that approximately 60,000 fans are expected to attend across both days, with a special broadcast version airing on KBS2 at 8:30 p.m. KST on December 30 for viewers in Korea and abroad.
As reported by outlets such as The Fact, Edaily, Sports Donga, Herald POP, and News1, the lineup for ‘Music Bank Japan 2025’ is packed with top-tier and rising K-Pop acts. Day 1 on December 13 will feature performances by ATEEZ, ITZY, TOMORROW X TOGETHER, ENHYPEN, NMIXX, BOYNEXTDOOR, RIIZE, ILLIT, KickFlip, Hearts2Hearts, and IDID. Day 2 on December 14 will showcase U-Know (of TVXQ), Stray Kids, NiziU, IVE, &TEAM, Xikers, ZEROBASEONE, TWS, NCT WISH, NEXZ, izna, KiiiKiii, and CORTIS, offering a cross-section of established leaders and next-generation groups within the K-Pop scene.
In earlier announcements covered by News1, KBS described ‘Golden Road’ as the core theme of this year’s festival, aiming to retrace the path K-Pop has taken from regional markets like Japan to the global mainstream. Tokyo National Stadium, which served as the main venue for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, will host a K-Pop event for the first time through ‘Music Bank Japan 2025’. For the industry, this setting highlights both the scale K-Pop has reached—filling a massive stadium over two days—and the ongoing cultural exchange between Korea and Japan in the field of popular music.
Korean reports also highlight Jang Wonyoung’s track record as one of KBS’s key year-end MCs. Since serving as the 37th ‘Music Bank’ MC in 2021, she has gone on to host major events such as the ‘2022 KBS Song Festival’, the ‘2023 Music Bank Global Festival’, and the ‘2024 KBS Song Festival Global Festival’. With four consecutive years of year-end hosting experience, Jang is expected to bring polished bilingual commentary and stage presence to ‘Music Bank Japan 2025’, offering continuity and familiarity for viewers who have followed her previous appearances.
For Lee Jun Young, ‘Music Bank Japan 2025’ marks his first time hosting a Music Bank Global Festival. Outlets such as Sports Donga and Herald POP note that he has earned recognition for his acting, including in the drama ‘Thank You for Coming, I’m Sorry’ (commonly referenced in Korean media as ‘폭싹 속았수다’), while his roots as an idol group member provide him with extensive on-stage experience. In addition to hosting both days, he is also slated to perform a special stage as a singer, giving fans a chance to see both sides of his career within a single event.
Taken together, Korean coverage frames ‘Music Bank Japan 2025’ as both a continuation of KBS’s global Music Bank brand and one of the most high-profile overseas K-Pop events of late 2025. Established acts such as ATEEZ and Stray Kids, who have already headlined major festivals across North America and Europe, will share the stage with newer groups like ILLIT and CORTIS, creating a lineup that connects different generations of K-Pop. For fans tracking schedules in Japan and Korea or planning year-end trips, the two-day festival at Tokyo National Stadium stands out as a key live event to watch.
【KStarLoud Analysis】In terms of lineup and venue strategy, ‘Music Bank Japan 2025’ functions less as a simple year-end recap and more as a macro snapshot of the current K-Pop ecosystem. Hosting around 60,000 attendees at an Olympic-class venue while splitting acts across two days allows KBS to juxtapose proven global tour headliners—such as Stray Kids, ATEEZ, TXT, ENHYPEN, and IVE—with emerging names like ILLIT, KickFlip, and CORTIS that are still building brand recognition. For KBS, the ‘Golden Road’ concept reframes Japan—from being one of K-Pop’s earliest overseas strongholds—into a symbolic gateway for exporting a festival-format version of the Music Bank brand. For agencies, securing a slot here effectively flags their artists as priority players in 2025’s overseas push. In that sense, the Tokyo National Stadium edition doubles as a real-time map of which teams currently anchor K-Pop’s global presence and which rookies are being positioned as the next wave.