BTS Member V is the Most Searched K-pop Artist in the World

• V topped Google Trends K-pop search rankings across 77 of 81 tracked regions in 2025, despite spending the first half of the year completing military service.
• HypeAuditor ranked him the third most influential figure globally, behind only Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, while brand deals with Coca-Cola and others pushed his estimated net worth to $40 million.
• BTS leads the 2025 Overseas Korean Wave Survey with a 24.6% preference rating, doubling BLACKPINK's 12.3%, ahead of the group's "Arirang" album and world tour in March.

BTS member V, born Kim Taehyung, was the most searched K-pop artist globally in 2025, according to aggregated Google Trends data. V led search interest across 77 of 81 tracked regions, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, and Brazil. He did so while making few public appearances throughout the year, having spent the first half of 2025 completing South Korea's mandatory military service before his discharge in June.

Google Trends measures relative search curiosity across countries and languages. V's dominance across that metric points to a level of global interest that extends well past the boundaries of dedicated K-pop fandom, reaching casual audiences and mainstream media consumers in markets where Korean pop music has historically had limited traction.

The numbers are backed by other rankings. Forbes Korea named V the No. 1 male Korean idol on its Top 30 Representative K-pop Idols of 2025 list, citing his reach across music, fashion, and lifestyle. HypeAuditor, an influencer analytics platform, ranked him third globally in its first-half 2025 analysis. Only Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi placed above him; Selena Gomez and Kendall Jenner followed in fourth and fifth.

BTS V brand deals 2025: Coca-Cola, Snow Peak, and a $4 million modeling fee

V's commercial appeal kept pace with his search numbers. In 2025, he held active partnerships with Coca-Cola, Snow Peak, TIRTIR, YUNTH, Compose Coffee, and Paradise City, among others. The Compose Coffee deal, signed in late 2023 ahead of V's enlistment, carried a reported total campaign cost of about 6 billion won (~$4.16 million), split between the company's headquarters and its franchise owners. The partnership continued actively through 2025, with new product lines and ad rollouts following his discharge.

These deals reflect a broader shift in how brands use K-pop artists. Rather than confining them to music promotion, companies now position top idols as cross-sector commercial figures whose influence drives product sales, tourism, and brand awareness simultaneously.

On social media, V maintained millions of Instagram followers with high engagement rates, and his Wikipedia pages collected tens of millions of views over the year. Backed by these partnerships and the commercial success of his solo album "Layover," V is now widely considered the wealthiest BTS member, with an estimated net worth of approximately $40 million.

BTS vs BLACKPINK: who leads the 2025 global hallyu wave?

The group behind V continues to sit at the top of global Korean Wave preference rankings. According to the 2025 Overseas Korean Wave Survey, which polled 26,400 respondents worldwide, BTS holds a preference rating of 24.6%, roughly double that of BLACKPINK at 12.3%. Other prominent acts such as IU, PSY, and Twice trailed further behind. (A separate government report, the 2025 Global Hallyu Trend Analysis, which measured media coverage rather than fan preference, found BLACKPINK leading BTS 14.2% to 7.3% in global K-pop media share.)

BTS is set to release "Arirang," a full-length studio album, on March 20. A world tour is already attached to the release, with multiple dates sold out. Netflix will broadcast the group's Gwanghwamun concert live in March.

V's search performance through a first half spent entirely off the public grid complicates the conventional wisdom that pop visibility requires constant content output. When he returns to the stage with "Arirang," he does so with quantifiable proof that his audience didn't leave while he was gone. For the Korean Wave's commercial pipeline heading into 2026, that kind of sustained global demand, unprompted and organic, is the harder metric to manufacture.