Festa is officially here, the family photo is up, and 'Swim' just locked a fourth straight number one — we’ve got a lot to cover today. I called the June 4 family photo on Monday, so let me enjoy this for exactly one second before we move on. You earned that. I'm Liz, he's Joey, this is BTS Daily — and today we're on the Festa launch, the Billboard double-record situation, the Singapore presale fallout, and an RM interview that changes how this reunion came together. Yeah, the RM piece is the one. The chart numbers have been wild all week, but that interview is where everything tilts. From K-Soul at allkpop:
BTS is celebrating their 13th anniversary with fans and has officially launched their 2026 Festa family photos. On June 4 KST, the global K-Pop act released a new set of family photos showing their resilience as a group, exuding warmth and love for one another. This marks the group's first anniversary celebration with all seven members reunited after their military service.
On June 2 I said the June 4 family photo was the one I needed — first full group shot since everybody got back — and here it is, real, and yes, it broke the internet exactly the way I thought it would. The theme is '13(B)TS,' and this is the official Festa launch — all seven reunited. It’s the tradition every year, but this year it means something different. Because RM told Mid-day the members were in tears at a 2024 pre-reunion gathering — they were really struggling to hold it together mentally — and now you look at this photo and it lands so differently. That warmth had a cost. Yeah, that changes a lot. When '13 goes beyond completion' first came out, it read like campaign language to me — now there’s real, sourced emotional weight behind it, and I’m giving that more credit. allkpop, with K-Soul:
According to the latest Billboard chart dated June 6, BTS ranked No. 1 on the 'Global Excl. U.S.' chart with "Swim," the title track from their fifth full-length album 'Arirang.' The song has now maintained the top spot for four consecutive weeks.The achievement marks the group’s longest-running No. 1 song of the year.
'Swim' is now at four consecutive weeks at No. 1 on Billboard Global Excl. U.S. — that matches the run BTS had with 'Dynamite' in 2020, so they’ve tied their own all-time record for the longest No. 1 run this year. And ARIRANG is also sitting in the Billboard 200 top ten for ten straight weeks at the same time — two chart records at once, in Festa week. I called the family photo for today, I did not call this statistical chaos, and I’m offended by how accurate it is. 'Swim' is climbing on Global 200 too, up six spots to No. 4 — so this isn’t holding, it’s speeding up. Pop Airplay at 13, Adult Contemporary at 17, Radio Songs at 25. The radio reach on this is real. And here’s the part that resets everything for me today — RM’s Mid-day interview just dropped, and he says the members were in tears at a 2024 pre-reunion gathering, really struggling to hold it together. These chart numbers aren’t just a comeback story. They almost didn’t get back to the room. Hazeeq Sukri, Baani Kaur, writing in CNA Lifestyle:
The first day of ticket presales for K-pop superstars BTS' upcoming Singapore concert kicked off at 12pm on Wednesday (Jun 3), with queue numbers in their ten thousands. Many members of the CNA Lifestyle team took part in Wednesday's presale, which was open to fans who held an official ARMY membership from fan platform Weverse.
Okay, so I called it on June 2 — Singapore was going to be chaos — and CNA Lifestyle just brought the receipts. VIP seats vanished in ten minutes for some fans, while others were stuck in five-figure queues watching the clock. That’s the Melbourne split playing out live, exactly the pattern I flagged. There are four dates at the National Stadium — December 17, 19, 20, and 22 — and the presale opened at noon yesterday. The ten-minute VIP window is real, but let’s be clear: that’s what happens when global demand runs into a venue with fixed capacity. The frustrating part is the queue split. Some people got in fast, some people got nothing. That’s not just disappointing — it’s the same infrastructure question from Melbourne that nobody’s answered yet. I’d ease off a little on calling the slow queue a system failure — high-demand presales do this. The real story is that demand is outrunning the setup, and four Singapore dates apparently still aren’t enough runway. Mid-day writes:
BTS leader RM revealed the members were in a difficult mental state before their reunion, with emotional conversations and tears marking a 2024 gathering. He said the experience strengthened his resolve to keep the group united as they prepared for their comeback
RM went on Weverse and talked about a 2024 gathering at Jimin’s home — after Jin finished his service — where the members were in tears. That’s not a vague 'it was hard' statement. That’s a specific room, a specific moment, straight from him. Okay, so I’ve been framing this whole comeback as '13 goes beyond completion' and saying there was real weight behind it — and RM just confirmed there was a room in 2024 where they were all crying and didn’t know if they could hold this together. That changes everything. What lands for me is that RM said it strengthened his resolve to keep the group united — which means there was a moment when that wasn’t guaranteed. ARIRANG doesn’t exist without somebody deciding to fight for it in that room. And now think about what Jungkook was doing in that same window — quietly stacking solo milestones, one after another. I read it as chart movement then. Now I hear it as somebody holding on while the group figured out whether there was still a group to come back to. allkpop writes:
According to Billboard on May 31 (local time), 'ARIRANG' climbed to No. 9 on the chart with 41,000 equivalent album units during the week ending May 28. The album has now spent 10 consecutive weeks in the top 10, making it the first album by a Korean artist to achieve this milestone on the Billboard 200.
Ten consecutive weeks in the Billboard 200 top ten — that’s the confirmed Billboard number as of May 31, with 41,000 equivalent album units for the week ending May 28 and a No. 9 finish. No Korean artist has ever held that floor for ten straight weeks. That’s the record. And I said on Tuesday the floor was going to hold, and it held. Ten weeks. But here’s what hits different today: RM just gave that interview about members breaking down in 2024 and wondering whether they could even get back here. Those 41,000 units in week ten are coming from an album that almost didn’t exist. That reframe is real. The chart story was always 'biggest sales week for a group in over a decade, debuted number one, held for three weeks' — but if the people making it were in tears a year before release trying to hold the group together, week ten lands in a completely different place. And 'Swim' is sitting at four straight Billboard Global chart number ones right now. Two separate records running at the same time, during Festa week, the same week the family photo dropped. I called the photo on June 2 and it’s here. The math on this week is genuinely unhinged. If BTS Daily Podcast is part of your routine, tap subscribe wherever you’re listening, and leave a quick review if you can. It helps more ARMY find the show and keep up with the updates that actually matter.
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That’s BTS Daily Podcast for this Thursday. Thanks for listening, and we’ll be back next time. This is a Lantern Podcast.