BTS Map of the Soul Tour was a planned worldwide concert tour headlined by South Korean boy band BTS to promote their Map of the Soul album series, including their Map of the Soul: Persona EP and Map of the Soul: 7 studio album. The all-stadium tour was announced on January 22, 2020, and set to begin on April 11, 2020, at the Seoul Olympic Stadium in Seoul, South Korea until it was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A two-day online concert, titled BTS Map of the Soul ON:E, was held on October 10–11, 2020, in place of the postponed world tour; the event garnered 993,000 viewers from 191 countries and territories. The postponed world tour was cancelled on August 19, 2021, due to continued uncertain circumstances and concerns over COVID-19.
Background
On January 21, 2020, BTS first announced 38 tour dates spanning Asia, North America, and Europe. The tour featured extended North American and European visits compared to previous tours due to popular demand.[1][2] On February 27, 2020, the group cancelled all four shows in South Korea amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.[3] On March 26, 2020, all 18 North American shows were postponed as the COVID-19 pandemic continued to raise concerns.[4] On April 28, 2020, BTS announced that the entire tour would be postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[5] On August 19, 2021, the group's label Big Hit Music announced through Weverse that the entire world tour was cancelled due to uncertain circumstances.[6]
Cancelled shows
List of cancelled concerts, showing date, city, country, venue, reason for cancellation and reference
BTS Map of the Soul ON:E was a two-day pay-per-view online concert headlined by South Korean boy band BTS to promote their Map of the Soul album series, including their Map of the Soul: Persona EP and Map of the Soul: 7 studio album, in place of the postponed Map of the Soul World Tour. The concert was broadcast live from the KSPO Dome in Seoul on October 10–11, 2020. Initially intended to have both a limited number of in-person tickets with a simultaneous online livestream, Big Hit Entertainment later cancelled the offline portion of the concert due to tightened COVID-19 pandemic government restrictions.[7][8] The concert featured slightly different set lists each day, and production costs were an estimated eight times higher than those of their previous online show, BangBangCon: The Live.[7] In total, the concert garnered 993,000 viewers from 191 countries and territories.[9]
Synopsis and production
The 150-minute show began with "On" and focused on songs from BTS' most recent studio album, Map of the Soul: 7, with its production heavily utilizing elements of augmented and extended reality. Rappers Suga, RM, and J-Hope performed the hip-hop track "Ugh!" together; Jin, Jungkook, V, and Jimin performed the soft-pop ballad "00:00" as a quartet. RM, Suga, Jimin, Jungkook, Jin, V, and J-Hope performed the solo tracks "Persona", "Shadow", "Filter", "My Time", "Inner Child", "Moon", and "Ego", respectively. Dark screens featured visuals resembling underwater scenery at the sides of the stage as the group performed "Black Swan", while with "Dope," the screen behind the stage created the illusion that the members were dancing on an elevator as it shot upward. The band also performed "Dionysus" and their singles "DNA", "Boy With Luv", and "No More Dream" as part of the 23-song set list. The encore began with two songs that were different for each show—"Butterfly" and "Run" for the first show and "Spring Day" and "Idol" for the second—and ended with "Dynamite" and "We Are Bulletproof: The Eternal".[10]
^Yoon Sang Geun (January 29, 2020). 방탄소년단, 월드투어 네덜란드 추가..7월 공연(공식) [Bulletproof Boy Scouts add World Tour Netherlands. July concert (official)]. Star News (in Korean). Retrieved January 29, 2020.
