- Stray Kids: The dominATE Experience transforms the group's international tour into cinema, with U.S. advance sales exceeding $1.4M USD in 24 hours.
- Stray Kids: the dominATE World Tour (2024-25) ranked amongst the top 10 global tours, grossing up to $260M while attracting millions of people worldwide.
- The film’s Feb 6 global release, including India, highlights the country's rising status as a solo K-pop event-cinema market.
Stray Kids: The dominATE Experience has raised the bar for K-pop content. The concert film, which documents the global dominATE World Tour, will be released in theatres on Feb 6, 2026, turning a high point in the group's commercial career into a cinematic spectacle. Early ticket sales in the United States exceeded $1.4 million USD in less than 24 hours, prompting the expansion of showtimes mere days after their availability.
Market Context of Stray Kids the dominATE Experience
Stray Kids' dominATE World Tour (2024-25) cemented their status as one of music's most popular live bands. Billboard's year-end Top Tours tally ranked them at No. 10 globally for 2025, with around 1.3 million tickets sold and ~ $185.7M earned from 31 reported shows. Independent concert trackers estimate that the complete tour, including unreported events, has drawn between 2.15 and 2.6M people and has generated approximately $260M in total revenue from 54 shows throughout Asia, North America, Latin America, Europe, and Oceania. North America was specifically a commercial success, attracting approximately 491,000 spectators while generating a revenue of ~$76.2M, making it the richest K-pop tour segment.
Stray Kids: The dominATE Experience Showcase Tour Boom
Stray Kids' touring boost coincides with significant development in live music revenue for K-pop acts. Notably, mid-2025 analysis revealed a boom with numerous groups setting new records and expanding their worldwide reach. Stray Kids have reportedly outperformed its peers in headline stadium attendance and income while selling sold-out stadium shows in South Korea in 2025, marking their first outdoor stadium dates under the dominATE: celebrATE name.
Stray Kids
Stray Kids The Dominate Experience’s Film Positioning and Strategy
The dominATE Experience combines full-set concert footage from SoFi Stadium with documentary portions that depict backstage dynamics. The project, directed by Paul Dugdale and featuring pieces by Farah X, is a planned push into event cinema, portraying K-pop's touring grandeur as box-office entertainment rather than pure concert footage.
Stray Kids has transitioned from breakthrough worldwide tours to cinematic territory in less than two years, with The dominATE Experience capturing both financial scale (multi-million-dollar tours) and cultural momentum. Early box-office excitement and record-breaking tour numbers position the group's present phase as a watershed moment in K-pop's transmedia expansion.
Stray Kids dominATE Experience India
India's participation in the 2025-26 cinematic launch of K-pop concert films and events, including the Stray Kids movie, represents a strategic extension of "event cinema" into the country. This comes in line with the overall increase in streaming access, live fandom activities, and premium multiplex penetration of K-pop in metropolitan markets.
In mid-2025, HYBE CINE FEST premiered a slate of concert films starring big performers, across 90+ screens in different Indian cities, thereby acting as a calculated market test ahead of HYBE's Indian office debut later that year. The bands which were included in the concert films were BTS, SEVENTEEN, TXT, and ENHYPEN.
Meanwhile, Stray Kids dominATE Experience is slated to release on Feb 6, as noted by various booking apps like BookMyShow. Notably, the theatres of major cities will be showcasing the concert film in 2D and in IMAX as well.
This expansion reflects more than just individual screenings of a globally popular content. It demonstrates that distributors and promoters circulating K-pop-related content are relying exclusively on fandom strength and participation to drive box office revenues, despite the absence of local tours by artists. Earlier, BLACKPINK's BORN PINK tour film was shown in Indian cinemas in 2024 as well, but the HYBE Cine Fest was one of the most planned efforts made to date.
Beyond mere fandom, these releases are reshaping the commercial landscape by surpassing conventional limits. Despite minimal domestic statistics for India at present, the sheer size of K-pop material distribution plans indicates a shift. It showcases that India's K-pop market is no longer a side play, but rather a self-sufficient engine that is capable of grounding these high-stakes global models according to the unique conditions of the country.
