BTS in Mexico: How the K-Pop Superstars’ Tour Became a State Affair
The return of the South Korean supergroup achieved historic figures in the Latin American country, whose president requested additional shows in response to demand from the local ARMY.
Black News 
When Mexico was announced in January as one of the stops for BTS‘ massive world tour during the spring, the visit of the K-pop supergroup to the Latin American country took on unexpected dimensions, elevating fan demand for a transparent ticket sales process to the level of diplomacy — and culminating in an unprecedented presidential request.
Through a letter, Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum asked her South Korean counterpart, Lee Jae Myung, for more BTS shows in Mexico. The president revealed on January 26, during her morning press conference, that she contacted the leader after tickets for the three dates the band is scheduled to perform this week (May 7, 9 and 10) at the GNP Seguros Stadium sold out in less than an hour.
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Previously, Sheinbaum said she had spoken with Alejandro Soberón, director of the promoter Ocesa, to request additional dates, but after no success, she sent the letter to her counterpart with the same request. “The concerts will be in May, and about a million young people want to buy tickets, but there are only 150,000 available,” Sheinbaum said.
Three weeks later, a response from South Korea arrived. In the letter, the South Korean government stated that it had forwarded the request to HYBE, the company that manages the supergroup. “He [Jae Myung] was very receptive to the request we made,” the Mexican president said on March 17.
Sheinbaum’s request came amid controversy over the presale and high demand for tickets to the BTS shows, which led her administration to demand “transparency” in ticket sales from Ocesa and Ticketmaster Mexico through the Federal Consumer Protection Agency (Profeco) after complaints on social media and nearly 5,000 emails.
“For these BTS shows, 136,400 tickets were sold on our platform, which proved stable, reliable, and secure,” the ticketing company said in a statement shared with Billboard. On its website, Ticketmaster Mexico explained that since the announcement of the ARIRANG tour, more than 2.1 million people had accessed the page looking for information related to BTS — “one of the highest-traffic inquiries in recent years,” it highlighted.
The company illustrated this statistic in two ways: if the sale had been physical, the line would have stretched from Mexico City to the U.S. border, a distance of between 785 and 2,300 kilometers (488 to 1,429 miles). It also compared the number of people who visited the site to the capacity of 46 concerts at the GNP Seguros Stadium.
Sheinbaum’s request to Jae Myung drew criticism from a sector of ARMY in Mexico, who considered it “excessive” to resort to diplomatic channels. “Our request was always the same: clarity in the ticket sales,” Melissa Salinas, a 27-year-old radio host from Sonora and a member of ARMY Mexico, tells Billboard Español. “Asking for more concerts in Mexico sparked criticism of our community from outside.”
But Sheinbaum wasn’t the only one who made BTS’s visit to Mexico a governmental matter. In late 2025, Mexico’s Secretary of Economy and former Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard took advantage of an official visit to South Korea to meet j-hope, a member of BTS, and express the love Mexicans have for their music, according to videos shared by himself on social media.
BTS has visited Mexico on three previous occasions: 2014, 2015 and 2017. The long-awaited return of its members RM, Jin, SUGA, j-hope, Jimin, V and Jung Kook has also generated high expectations among authorities and business sectors in the capital city due to the economic impact it will have.
“The visit of BTS is a major event for Mexico,” Vicente Gutiérrez, president of the National Chamber of Commerce, Services and Tourism of Mexico City (Canaco CDMX), tells Billboard Español. According to Gutiérrez, Canaco estimates an economic impact of approximately $107.5 million (1.861 billion pesos), of which nearly $88 million (1.529 billion pesos) will come from ticket sales.
Mexico City will be just one stop on BTS’s massive ARIRANG World Tour, which began on April 9 at the Goyang Stadium in Seoul. But the local fandom predicts it will be historic.
“They’re going to fall in love with Mexico,” Salinas says. “BTS plus the Mexican ARMY is a formula that never fails.”
