ATEEZ top both lists in a 142-person insider poll
ATEEZ have finished first in both categories of a JoyNews24 survey of K-pop industry professionals, heading the best song and artist of the year lists for 2026. Their track "Bad" collected 27 votes from the 142 insiders who took part, and the group took the same number in the artist category, as Koreaboo reported when the results were released.
The two lists do not simply repeat each other further down. RESCENE sit second in both, but BTS appear third among artists and only eighth among songs, while AKMU are fourth as artists and third for a single. BIGBANG rank fifth as artists, higher than their placing in the song vote. Those differences matter: the survey is asking two separate questions about a year's output, and the people answering them weigh a live act and a three-minute track by different standards.
For a group like ATEEZ, the result sharpens a case that has been building away from the singles chart. The insiders who voted for them as artist of the year were not simply rewarding "Bad". According to the survey reporting, their live performances and the volume of content around them were cited as reasons for the placement, which suggests professional regard for the wider operation rather than a single viral moment.
What the JoyNews24 survey actually measures
JoyNews24 asked 142 people working in the industry — staff at entertainment companies, broadcast professionals and music producers — to name their picks across the two categories. That is a small, specific electorate, and its shape explains a lot about the outcome.
Twenty-seven votes is a clear first place, but it is well short of a majority of the 142 respondents, so this is a plurality among professionals rather than anything resembling a consensus. The tail of both lists is long and thin, with plenty of songs and artists picking up a single mention or a pair. That spread is arguably as informative as the top line: Korean pop in 2026 did not produce one release that the whole industry could agree on.
The survey also measures reputation among people who work alongside these acts, not sales, streams or chart points. A group can win here without dominating the Circle Chart, and a huge commercial release can place modestly. Read as a peer review rather than a scoreboard, the results are useful; read as a ranking of quality, they would be overstating what a 142-person poll can tell you.
One limit worth stating plainly: the reporting gives vote totals and short explanations, but not a breakdown of which voters backed which act. Any conclusion about why, say, producers and broadcast staff diverged is inference rather than something the survey itself establishes.
RESCENE's slow-burn second place
RESCENE finished second in both categories, with 21 votes for "LOVE ATTACK" and 24 as artists — a notably higher artist tally than song tally. That shape fits a group whose year has been built on accumulated momentum rather than one explosive release.
The song itself originally came out in 2024, which makes its appearance near the top of a 2026 list notable. Koreaboo's report describes the group as having risen from what fans have called "nugudom", the Korean shorthand for the lower rungs of the idol ecosystem, and credits the track with making a large impact well after its first release.
A song that finds its audience a year or two late is a familiar pattern in K-pop, but it is rarer for the industry to formally acknowledge it in a year-end poll.
The 24 artist votes suggest the professionals were responding to more than that one track. RESCENE's presence across the tail end of 2026 — including Woni's first place in October's individual idol brand reputation rankings, a separate index — points to a group that has become a fixture of the conversation rather than a one-song story.
BTS return to the artist top three
BTS placed third among artists with 23 votes, a strong showing in a year that saw the group return to activity. The survey reporting attributes the placement to their combined musical output and chart performance, without singling out one release as decisive.
Their song "SWIM" tied for eighth with four votes, level with BIGBANG's "BiiiG". That gap between a high artist placing and a modest song placing is the clearest illustration of how the two questions diverge: an established group can be judged on the weight of a whole year's activity, while a single has to compete on its own terms against everything else released in the same twelve months.
For readers who follow the group closely, the interesting detail is the split between professional regard and the song vote. The insiders evidently saw BTS's 2026 as significant in aggregate. They were less persuaded that any one track stood above the year's field.
AKMU's first release without YG
AKMU took 13 votes as artists and 14 for "Paradise of Rumor", which finished third in the song category. According to the reporting, the track is not the title track of the album it comes from, which makes its placing among the year's most-cited songs something of a surprise.
The context is a significant one for the duo. AKMU left YG Entertainment after 12 years and set up their own label, and their first release under that arrangement reportedly achieved an all-kill across the Korean charts. Lee Chanhyuk also picked up a single artist vote in his own right, separate from the duo's tally.
A non-title track winning this kind of professional attention says something about how the industry listens. Title tracks are the ones pushed through broadcast slots, teasers and playlisting; a B-side or album cut that climbs into the top three of an insiders' song poll has usually got there on the strength of the song itself. The independence story adds a second layer, since the release carried the extra scrutiny that comes with a first project after a long-standing label relationship ends.
From Hwasa to A2O LITE: the rest of the vote
Hwasa's "Good Goodbye" placed fourth with 13 votes, with the report noting that the track stayed in circulation through the year because of the message it carries. CORTIS followed in fifth with 12 votes for "Red Red", and the group also placed sixth among artists with six votes — one of the more balanced showings on either list.
I.O.I's "Suddenly" took sixth with seven votes, and A2O LITE's NEON came seventh with five. The A2O LITE single has had a busy run on Korean music shows, which may help explain why professionals had it close to hand when filling in the survey. BTS's "SWIM" and BIGBANG's "BiiiG" then tied for eighth on four votes each.
Below that, the song list fragments quickly. Tracks on two votes apiece included i-dle's "Mono", NCT 127's "Blingy", aespa's "Lemonade", NMIXX's "Heavy Serenade", IVE's "Bang Bang", ILLIT's "It's Me", Choi Yena's "Catch Catch" and Soyeon's "I'm Quitting". In the artist category, BIGBANG placed fifth with eight votes, aespa and NCT 127 tied for seventh with three each, and I.O.I, A2O LITE, Hwasa and Choi Yena shared eighth on two votes apiece.
The single-vote names stretch across generations and genres: PLAVE, TXT's Yeonjun, Silica Gel, ENHYPEN, TWS, DAY6, RIIZE, NCT WISH, G-Dragon, Lim Young Woong, ZEROBASEONE, BLACKPINK's Jennie and IVE among them. That breadth is worth dwelling on. It suggests an industry with no shortage of respected work and no shared centre of gravity.
What the spread of votes tells us about 2026
Three themes run through the results. The first is live performance as a measure of standing: ATEEZ's win was explained partly through their shows and content, which points to a sector where touring and stage reputation carry real weight with colleagues. The second is longevity. RESCENE's rise came on a 2024 song, and Hwasa's track stayed current across the year, both reminders that a release can have a long life in Korea well beyond its opening weeks.
The third is autonomy. AKMU's placing after leaving a major label and launching their own operation reads, in this context, as professional approval of a risk that paid off. Set against BTS's return and BIGBANG's continuing presence in the vote, it suggests the insiders were weighing career decisions as much as individual songs.
What the poll cannot do is settle anything about scale. It does not tell you what sold, what streamed or what filled venues. It tells you what a particular group of people inside the business found memorable, and the fact that their answers were so scattered is itself a finding. In a year without an obvious dominant release, the professionals spread their votes widely and rewarded different things in different categories.
For fans, the more useful reading is as a map of reputation rather than a ranking to argue over. Groups with a strong live reputation, acts that broke away from big-label structures and songs that found their audience late all feature prominently. Those are the kinds of stories that tend to shape the next year's releases too.
The takeaway
ATEEZ's double first place is the headline, and RESCENE's twin second places is the story underneath it: an insiders' poll that rewards live reputation and long-tail momentum as much as a big opening week. With 27 votes out of 142, though, the top of the list reflects a strong professional plurality, not an industry-wide verdict.
Treat the results as a snapshot of how the people who work in K-pop saw 2026, and the long tail of one- and two-vote names becomes just as interesting as the winners.
