When Tomorrow X Together released '7th Year: A Moment of Stillness in the Thorns' on April 13, 2026, the timing carried its own meaning: seven years after their debut, the group was releasing a mini album that confronted that anniversary directly, its title drawn from the same emotional reckoning that has always distinguished TXT from their BigHit labelmates. The TXT 7th Year Billboard 200 2026 debut that followed — #3 on the chart, driven by 67,000 US equivalent album units in the first tracking week — was, commercially, precisely what the group's track record had predicted. What the Billboard Top Album Sales chart confirmed was something historically unprecedented: a ninth No. 1 on the ranking that no other K-pop act had reached more than eight times. The record belongs to TXT.
NINE NO. 1 ALBUMS ON BILLBOARD'S TOP ALBUM SALES CHART: THE RECORD TXT JUST WROTE
Billboard's Top Album Sales chart ranks the week's best-selling albums by pure sales — no streaming equivalents, no track equivalent units. It is the most direct measure of fan purchasing intent, and it is the chart on which Tomorrow X Together have posted an uninterrupted series of No. 1 entries since their 2019 debut. With '7th Year' reaching the summit, TXT became the first K-pop act in history to record nine No. 1 albums on the chart — surpassing the eight-entry record that was already uniquely theirs. The nine entries span their full discography from 'The Dream Chapter: Star' through '7th Year,' an unbroken run covering four mini albums, two studio albums, and a repackage across a seven-year arc.
The entry at #3 on the broader Billboard 200 — which combines streaming equivalents with sales — reflects a slightly different picture. The 67,000 total US units in the week ending April 23 consisted predominantly of traditional album sales, with 2,000 streaming equivalent album units (2.67 million on-demand audio streams). The sales-heavy distribution is consistent with TXT's MOA fanbase behavior: the fandom consistently drives physical purchasing at a rate that ranks among the genre's highest. The result is a group whose commercial profile looks distinctly different on a sales chart versus a streaming chart — evidence of a fanbase that treats physical ownership as a primary act of support rather than a supplementary one.
FIRST COMEBACK AFTER CONTRACT RENEWAL: WHAT '7TH YEAR' REPRESENTS FOR TXT AND BIGHIT
'7th Year' arrived as TXT's first release after renewing their contracts with BigHit Music — a renewal announced in early 2026 that had been the subject of considerable fan speculation across the second half of 2025. Seventh-year renewals carry particular weight in K-pop: they are the industry's traditional moment of reckoning, when the original trainee-to-debut pipeline culminates in a commercial and relational decision about each group's future. The fact that all five members — Yeonjun, Soobin, Beomgyu, Taehyun, and Huening Kai — renewed, and that the first post-renewal comeback addressed the seven-year milestone directly in its title, signals an alignment between the group's creative self-understanding and their label's trajectory that is not always present at renewal junctures.
The album concept is candid rather than celebratory. '7th Year' captures, as the group described it, the emotions experienced across their seven-year career — anxiety, emptiness, and growth. The title track 'Stick With You' operates within TXT's established emotional register: melodically direct, lyrically honest about dependence and connection. The 'thornbush' image in the subtitle — 'A Moment of Stillness in the Thorns' — frames growth not as triumphant but as the pause found within discomfort: growth that requires the thornbush, not growth that has already escaped it. It is among the more philosophically precise concept descriptions TXT have offered in their discography.
GRAND SLAM AND TXT'S 'STICK WITH YOU': SWEEPING ALL FIVE KOREAN MUSIC SHOWS
On Korean music platforms, '7th Year' translated into TXT's first-ever Grand Slam — a sweep of all five major music program wins in a single week: Show Champion, M Countdown, Music Bank, Show! Music Core, and Inkigayo. A Grand Slam requires winning at every weekly and daily music show that airs in a given period, making it one of the most demanding single-week achievements in K-pop's domestic chart structure. For TXT, whose Billboard presence had been consistent since debut but whose domestic Grand Slam had remained elusive across seven years, the sweep confirmed that '7th Year' performed at the highest tier of both international commercial tracking and Korean cultural approval simultaneously.
The promotional cycle supporting the Grand Slam was among TXT's most active: a full comeback showcase at Korea University's Hwajeong Gymnasium, appearances across every major music program, and the kind of sustained media engagement that transforms a comeback announcement into a cultural event. The fact that the Grand Slam and the Billboard records arrived in the same tracking week — rather than in sequence — gave '7th Year' a launch period that was unusual even for a group of TXT's calibre. The record-making began immediately and needed no time to accumulate.
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