After completing mandatory military service and spending years pursuing individual projects, BTS – RM, Jin, SUGA, j-hope, Jimin, V, and Jungkook – reunited as a full group in February 2026 for their first joint cover story since announcing their hiatus back in 2022. The run of interviews that followed, tied to their comeback album ARIRANG and a new documentary, offer a rare, candid look at what it took to bring seven very different solo careers back into a single band.
Getting the Band Back in One Room
For the GQ March 2026 cover story, the members described returning to a shared routine that echoed their earliest days as trainees. RM detailed how the group spent two months living together in Los Angeles, training in the mornings, breaking for lunch, and then heading to the studio through the evening to work with songwriters and producers – a structured, almost corporate schedule the members themselves compared to office life. SUGA, who completed his service as a public-service worker, was especially proud of his punctuality, joking that he was never once late and always arrived ten minutes early.
That same GQ feature revealed just how uncertain the reunion once felt. RM had told fans in a December Weverse livestream that he’d considered disbanding the group more times than he could count, driven by the sheer weight of expectation. In the interview itself, the members admitted to leaning on each other through the hardest stretches of that pressure, with V describing how the group would poke fun at RM to his face while privately being moved by the same struggles.
Writing ‘ARIRANG’ as a Way Back to Each Other
Rolling Stone’s April 2026 cover package went deepest into the emotional core of the reunion. RM explained that his eighteen months of insomnia during military service left him in what he called an internal “cave,” and that even now, reassembled with his bandmates in a Hybe studio in Seoul, he still doesn’t have a tidy answer for what BTS is supposed to be in 2026. Rather than resolve that uncertainty, he said the group’s honesty about still figuring it out is itself part of the message behind the album’s fourteen tracks.
Each member brought a distinct read on what the reunion means to them, according to that same Rolling Stone reporting. Jin said he’s always felt there’d be no reason to keep working without the group behind him. SUGA described arriving at the reunion with a calmer outlook than in earlier years, more interested in health and balance than in chasing further achievements. Jimin spoke about wanting to keep raising the group’s artistic standing, while V focused on the physical and mental rebuilding he underwent during his service. Jungkook, for his part, said his hiatus-long hunger to get back on stage went directly into shaping the group’s new material. RM tied the whole project together with a line about creative risk, saying that if the group ever stops challenging itself, there’s no reason for it to keep going as a team.
The Long Road to “Please Look Forward to It”
Well before the group’s official comeback was confirmed, individual members had already been dropping hints about what was coming. Speaking to Weverse Magazine, j-hope described the excitement of watching each member’s separate solo identity fold back into the group, calling the return of everyone’s blended styles the strange, funny part of being in BTS. At W Korea’s Love Your W event, RM gave fans a firmer timeline, revealing that the group was already deep into album photos and a music video shoot.
In an Apple Music 1 conversation with Zane Lowe, j-hope was more direct about his expectations, telling Lowe he was looking forward to June, when the last of the members would finish their service and the group could regroup to plan its next moves. Jung Kook, meanwhile, used an interview with Elle Korea to underline just how much was riding on the group’s return that spring.
A More Mature BTS
By the time ARIRANG arrived on March 20, 2026 – followed a day later by the concert film BTS THE COMEBACK LIVE | ARIRANG – the members were framing the album less as a triumphant victory lap than as an honest status update. In a separate GQ online segment where they responded directly to fan questions, the group described reconnecting in the studio as the most meaningful part of getting back together, and committed to returning with a more mature image in both their music and their performances going forward.
Seven members, one comeback, and – by their own account – still no fully settled answer to what BTS becomes next. If anything, that openness is what the group seems to be leaning into for this new era.
Sources
- Rolling Stone – “BTS Interview: On Reuniting, New Album ‘Arirang’ and Their Future Plans”
- Billboard – “Everything the Members of BTS Have Said About Their Upcoming Reunion”
- allkpop – “BTS reunites for GQ March 2026 cover, opens up about comeback, pressure, and new album”
- allkpop – “BTS talks reunion, growth, and future as seven in Rolling Stone cover interview”
- allkpop – “BTS reply to fans online in GQ interview, share stories about their comeback”
