Girls Planet 2 Is Coming — And the Global Auditions Start Now

The next generation of K-pop's biggest girl group hunt is officially underway. Mnet confirmed Girls Planet 2 on May 1, 2026, opening global auditions for a survival competition that will air in 2027. The original Girls Planet 999 debuted Kep1er in 2021 — one of the most successful K-pop girl groups to emerge from a survival format in recent years. Its sequel now begins the same process from the first step: finding the contestants.

The announcement came through Mnet's official YouTube channel, where the production team released a promotional video titled "GIRLS PLANET 2: GLOBAL AUDITION OPEN." Audition submissions opened immediately, on the morning of May 1, and will continue until a separately announced deadline. The format mirrors the original in scope: an international competition with no restrictions on nationality or country of residence.

Who Can Apply and How

The eligibility requirements are deliberately inclusive. Any person born before January 1, 2013 — making them 13 or older at the time of casting — can submit an application, regardless of where they live. The production team has specified that applicants must submit three videos: a self-introduction, a vocal or rap performance, and a dance performance.

The instructions are notably strict about presentation: masks and hats are not allowed, and editing or beauty filter applications are prohibited. The mandate for unfiltered, natural presentation reflects a common tension in K-pop survival shows — audiences and producers both want to see the actual person, not a produced version of them, at the audition stage. The filters come later.

The production team described the project in terms that echo its predecessor's premise: "Girls from different backgrounds, crossing the boundaries of language and origin, running toward the same dream — that journey will be more brilliant than ever." It's the familiar survival show pitch, but in the context of K-pop's continued global expansion, it lands differently in 2026 than it did in 2021.

What Girls Planet 999 Built — and What It Left Behind

Girls Planet 999 ran in 2021 and assembled 99 contestants from Korea, China, and Japan. The show's format placed the selection power largely with global fans through voting, a structure that often favored contestants with established online followings over those with the strongest raw talent. The nine-member group Kep1er, who debuted in January 2022 following the show, has since become one of K-pop's more durable fourth-generation girl groups — charting consistently, touring internationally, and building a loyal fanbase that has stayed through their full contract period.

That success matters for Girls Planet 2 because it creates an expectation. Survival shows that produce active, successful groups are considerably more attractive to potential contestants than those where the final product disappears within a year. Kep1er's continued presence gives Girls Planet 2 a track record to advertise. The contestants who apply in 2026 are doing so knowing that the original show's winners are still performing.

What the sequel is doing differently — in terms of structure, voting mechanics, or international representation — has not yet been announced. The casting video focused entirely on attracting applicants rather than explaining the format. Those details will presumably arrive as the production moves forward and a broadcast timeline is confirmed for 2027.

The Girls Planet 2 Opportunity in a Changed Market

K-pop's girl group landscape has shifted significantly since 2021. The fourth generation — led by groups like aespa, IVE, BLACKPINK at their commercial peak, and later NewJeans and ILLIT — has pushed the genre into its deepest international penetration yet. A survival show in 2027 will be competing for contestants and audience attention in a more crowded space than the original faced.

That competition cuts in two directions. On one hand, the pool of trained, globally aware K-pop hopefuls is larger than it has ever been. The trainees applying for Girls Planet 2 will have grown up watching not just Kep1er but the full arc of modern K-pop, and many will arrive with performance skills, language abilities, and social media savvy that earlier generations of trainees did not have at audition age.

On the other hand, audience expectations have also risen. Viewers who followed Girls Planet 999 and watched Kep1er develop over four years now have a clear sense of what a survival show graduate looks like, sounds like, and how long it takes to build into something lasting. Girls Planet 2 will be evaluated against that baseline from the first episode.

What Fans Are Already Saying

Reaction to the announcement on social media has been energetic and largely positive among K-pop fans, with particular enthusiasm from audiences in Japan, China, and Southeast Asia — the regions that drove significant international voting during the original run. The global audition format, which opens the competition to contestants from countries beyond the original Korea-China-Japan triangle, has generated particular interest.

Fan communities on platforms like Twitter/X and Reddit are already speculating about which countries might produce the season's standout contestants, whether the format will expand to include more national representation than the original, and whether the voting mechanics will be adjusted to address some of the criticisms the first season received about the outsized influence of organized fandom voting blocks.

None of those questions have answers yet. What is known is that the process has started, the applications are open, and somewhere in the pool of candidates submitting videos right now, the members of the group that will debut at the end of this process are preparing for the cameras.

The competition does not have a premiere date, a confirmed format, or a final member count. What it has, as of May 1, 2026, is an open audition and the weight of everything Kep1er built behind it.

For contestants considering whether to apply, the timeline is worth noting. Applications are open now, but the show itself will not air until 2027 — meaning the audition-to-debut journey, if successful, spans roughly a year or more. That is not unusual for K-pop survival formats, where the gap between competition and debut is used for intensive training and group preparation. For anyone serious about the opportunity, the early application window is not a disadvantage — it is a head start.

The announcement also signals something larger about how the K-pop industry is positioning itself for the decade ahead. New groups formed through survival competitions have consistently generated the kind of sustained fan investment that builds lasting careers. Girls Planet 2, if it follows its predecessor's template, will add another cohort of artists to that pipeline — global in origin, trained to industry standards, and entering a market that has never been more ready for what K-pop has to offer.