[Photo] OSEN DB.
Group BTS’s BTS SWIM Spotify milestone marks the first 2026 release to cross the 1 billion streaming mark.
Released on March 20 as the title track of their 5th full-length album ‘ARIRANG’, ‘SWIM’ surpassed 1 billion cumulative streams on the global music platform Spotify as of October 24. This is the fastest record for the team and the first among all songs released worldwide this year, making ‘SWIM’ BTS’s 7th song to exceed 1 billion streams, following hits like ‘Dynamite’, ‘Butter’, and ‘Boy With Luv (Feat. Halsey)’.
The track also won ‘Song of the Summer’ and ‘Song of the Year’ at this year’s American Music Awards and 2026 MTV Video Music Awards. After entering the Billboard main song chart ‘Hot 100’ at No. 1 on the April 4 chart, it charted for 20 consecutive weeks and broke the group’s own record by peaking at No. 2 on the UK Official Singles Top 100. On its first day of release on Spotify, it recorded approximately 14 million streams—the highest figure for any song released this year—and topped the ‘Daily Top Song Global’ chart.
Their new album ‘ARIRANG’, released after 3 years and 9 months, also surpassed 5.0 billion cumulative streams as of the 14th, recording the highest play count among all albums released worldwide this year. All 14 tracks, including the interlude ‘No. 29’ featuring the sound of the Seongdeok Daewang Bell, surpassed 200 million streams, proving the album’s solid popularity.
‘SWIM’ is a track that expresses the determination to keep going and navigate the waves of life at one’s own pace, framed as ‘love for life’, with RM participating heavily in the songwriting to enhance the sincerity of the message.
