In case you missed it, YG finally announced the name of Blackpink’s upcoming world tour yesterday morning, 16 May 2025 at 11 am (KST). Blackpink’s upcoming world tour is titled ‘Deadline’.

Greysuitcase - Blackpink 'Deadline' World Tour Announcement First Reactions & Commentary

The time the announcement was published is new since big announcements usually drop at midnight in the past. Blinks usually stay up to wait for these announcements or check YG’s website if a new locked article has appeared (they usually post the article the day before and make it public the next day). But I guess we’re switching to the 11 am KST time for this era. One comment said that they might be following the Western time (which I assume is the States maybe) which makes sense since they now have a lot of new fans in the states since their solo era.

My Initial Reactions

I first saw the post on Instagram (so I haven’t seen the general reactions of the X-sphere) and my immediate initial reaction was:

“Huh?”

Literally so confused on how they picked ‘Deadline’ as a world tour title because to be honest, it kinda sounds like something that you’re forced to do and I’m associating the word with a more negative connotation rather than a positive one.

And it also felt like they ran out of time to think of a better title since Blinks have been voicing their concerns about the lack of information about the upcoming world tour and comeback and so let’s just go with ‘Deadline’ to meet the deadline (I might feel differently if this was announced before they started selling the tickets for the tour). You know what I mean?

But then I was like, maybe my brain wasn’t working properly just yet.
Maybe my brain’s still half asleep.
Maybe they do have a solid explanation about this choice of title and I’m just not getting it.
It was only 9 am after all.

So then, as usual, I went to X to find the meaning and concept behind the title.

The first post I saw on X that’s related to the world tour title was this one:

“It implies the meaning of an opportunity to bring out extreme concentration and an irreversible last moment, so it is expected to be a performance with a high degree of completion on an overwhelming scale.”

And then I was like, “HUH?????”

Okay, clearly that was probably taken from a direct Google Translate or Papago translation because the English is not Englishing. So I scrolled some more and found this:

“It implies a moment of extreme focus—a point of no return—and hints at a high-quality performance on an overwhelming scale, heightening anticipation.”

Okay, this one sounds a bit better and the statement makes more sense but honestly, I still don’t associate these descriptions with the word ‘Deadline’. This could well be the description of the word ‘concert’ or ‘stage performance’ to be honest, no?

Is it just me? 🤔

But anyways, since I’m still not getting it, I decided to just see how others interpret and react to this announcement. There are a couple of themes regarding these reactions.

the *friendly jabs

(*or maybe not so friendly? 😆)

yg summoning the girls

I mean....I can see that. With the amount of solo activities they’ve been doing lately, it’s definitely possible that they forgot to go back to YG for their group activities. 😆

Comments on the Poster Design

Last-Minute Prep Vibes

Not gonna lie, out of all the Blackpink Tour announcements, this one’s probably feel the most half-assed and last-minute one (in terms of marketing timing). I get that the members are busy, but what is the supposed separate team YG formed to handle the Blackpink’s upcoming world tour is doing all these time? The lack of updates is baffling. At this point, with no comeback announcement in sight, buying a ticket to this tour feels like buying a mystery box. But just to be clear, I still wanna go. 😆

Pattern Spotting

Alternative Tour Name Suggestions

‘The Revolution’ is the best alt I’ve seen so far. Plus it’s fitting with their brand.

tour greeting simulation

One Blink posted on X:

“Annyeonghaseyo welcome to the Blackpink Deadline world tour Day 1 here in-” —@globaIpinks

Now that I read this post and imagining one of the members saying this line, the tour’s opening greeting might sound a little awkward. 😂😂😂 But I’m sure we’ll get used to it eventually.

Next Album Prediction

Many also predicted that ‘Deadline’ will be the next album’s name since Born Pink was used both for the album and the world tour last time.

the disbandment prediction

If you don’t already know, many have voiced their predictions that this will be Blackpink’s last concert before they disband and focus on their solo careers. And the choice of the title really doesn’t help to quell these rumors.

Will they really disband after this tour?

I really don’t know.

But looking from a business perspective, why would they? Assuming that they now have a pretty significant upper hand and power in negotiating their contracts with YG, I would imagine by continuing their group activity, they probably could earn a good amount of money. Unless their group contract is extremely disadvantage to them, I think they probably won’t disband. They probably would just reduce their group activities. But we’re used to that so... nothing new honestly.

the ‘how you like that’ reference

For reference, they’re referring to the bridge of ‘How You Like That’ that Rosé sings:

🎵
날개 잃은 채로 추락했던 날
The day I fell without my wings

어두운 나날 속에 갇혀 있던 날
Those dark days where I was trapped

그때쯤에 넌 날 끝내야 했어
You should’ve ended me when you had the chance

Look up in the sky, it’s a bird it’s a plane
🎵

I think out of all the interpretations, I like this one the most. It’s the most positive one. Although I do think connecting ‘Deadline’ to this is a bit far fetched since it does feel the word is meant for people outside the fandom and does not focus so much on the group and Blinks? I don’t know. Maybe I’m just reading too much into it (or didn’t manage to read into it enough).

But as of now, I’m kind of mid on the title. Not really feeling it. Even ‘The Revolution’ sounds a bit better than ‘Deadline’ in my opinion. But let’s see if my feelings change in the future.

Comeback Predictions

Now that the tour title has dropped, some predicted that the comeback will not happen until next month, which makes sense.

If they’re doing a comeback right after this, it’ll feel even more rushed than everything already is at the moment. One month to build up the momentum for the comeback is honestly pushing it, but it can still works.

Or they can do it for the album release, do the actual comeback during the Goyang Stadium Tour and essentially treating the tour as their ‘music show’ stages.

But at the very least, I really do think we need that album to come out before the actual tour kicks off because I don’t know how fun will the concert be if we never hear any of the new songs. Like, how would we sing along to that?

In any case, I’m just hoping that they wouldn’t actually thinking of releasing the new albuma day before the Goyang Stadium show like this post is saying. It’s one thing to stick to a concept, but doing that is just taking things a little bit too extreme I think.

At least for us in the South East Asian countries—since the cities and dates for this leg of the tour haven’t been announced yet—by the time Blackpink is in our areas, there’s a higher probability that the album is already out by then (or at least I’m hoping).

For now, my feeling is all we can do is to hope that this world tour plan makes it out of the group chat and into the real world. 😝🤭

All I know is ticket wars are going to be insane this time around I predict. I tried to get tickets for the Goyang Stadium shows and it sold out when I was still in the virtual queue. 😭😭😭 Streets are saying the 2-days show sold out in under 15 minutes with over 121k fans in the queue (capacity of the stadium is 40k by the way).

Anybody planning to attend this tour?