On Jan 30, 2026 12 AM (KST), YG dropped Blackpink’s first set of teaser photos for their upcoming mini album ‘Deadline’.

The drop was somewhat came out of left field for Blinks since to some who have been counting down for teaser drop every Friday of the week since the beginning of new year didn’t get anything and assumed there won’t be teasers released. And some who were expecting teasers assumed that they’ll be rolling them out at the beginning of next month, closer to the comeback date.

I think at this point, predicting how YG will handle Blackpink’s marketing strategy for their upcoming comeback is a little hard just because we’ve been getting so little rollout (if any) in the past couple of comebacks. Although I do think with the release of the first set of teaser photos almost a month before the actual comeback, we might be going back to the old ways of YG doing rollout teaser releases to build up for the comeback.

Also, I lowkey think that they’re dropping the teasers to get people to pre-save their music. I don’t know how important this is for Blackpink & YG themselves, but the big fan accounts on X have been trying hard to get people to pre-save the ‘Deadline’ album because the number of pre-save is lower than Blackpink’s previous comebacks. And they’ve been saying that it’s crucial for people to pre-save the album prior to the comeback for algorithm so that the album can be pushed to more audience. Just a theory though.

But I gotta say, this comeback does feel like the quietest comeback in Blackpink’s history. It might be a good idea for YG to step up their marketing game to at least make some noise online. And I guess this teaser drop is a good starting point. How much content we’ll be getting this time? Only time will tell.