After three years away from the long-form format, fromis_9 is back in album season. On July 21, 2026, the group released Glow ME, its second full-length studio album, at 6 p.m. KST across every major streaming platform, led by the title track Vitamin ME. It is the group's first proper album since 2023's Unlock My World, and its first full-length under a new home, the label ASND, following the members' departure from Pledis Entertainment. For a group that has spent much of its life as a summer specialist, the timing could not be more on-brand: a bright, citrus-colored record dropped right into the heat of late July.
Glow ME collects ten tracks that move across a wider stylistic range than fans might expect from a "summer comeback." Alongside Vitamin ME, the tracklist runs through ETERNAL, Pocket Treat, Blue Heart, Screen Time, Teacher, Cold Blood, Why do I cry?, DAY 1 and Wonderland. The album is built around a single idea: the journey of discovering a radiant version of yourself. According to the label, the emotions that come with new relationships and experiences, excitement, courage and comfort, are reframed as the fuel for personal growth rather than as passing feelings.
What makes this release land differently from a typical idol drop is how much of it came from the members themselves. Every member of fromis_9 took part in the songwriting across the record, a detail the group has leaned into as proof that Glow ME carries their own voice rather than a sound handed to them. The title track, Vitamin ME, rides a Latin-inflected rhythmic groove under an addictive top-line melody, keeping the crisp, cheerful signature that made the group a chart fixture while nudging it somewhere new.
Why It Matters
To understand why Glow ME feels like more than another comeback, it helps to know where fromis_9 has been. The group was assembled through the 2017 reality series Idol School and formally rounded out via Produce 48, debuting as a nine-member act before eventually settling into the five-member lineup that carries the name today: Song Hayoung, Park Jiwon, Lee Chaeyoung, Lee Nagyung and Baek Jiheon. In early 2025, those five signed with ASND after leaving Pledis Entertainment, a label under the HYBE umbrella. Glow ME is the first full-length statement of that new chapter.
That context turns an ordinary summer single into a test of independence. Leaving a major label is one thing; proving you can still command a season without that machinery behind you is another. By handing the songwriting to the members and framing the album as a story about self-discovery, ASND and fromis_9 are effectively arguing that the group's identity travels with the people, not the building they used to work in. It is a bet that the fanbase, known as Flover, will follow the artists rather than the corporate address.
There is also a commercial logic to the move. K-pop's first half of 2026 set fresh album-sales records, and the summer window remains one of the most contested slots on the calendar. fromis_9 has history here: last year's sixth mini-album From Our 20's and its title track LIKE YOU BETTER parked in the upper reaches of the Melon Top 100 for three straight weeks. Re-entering that race with a self-authored full album is a way of reasserting the "summer queen" positioning the group has quietly built over the years.
The Reaction
The comeback rollout carried a distinctly member-driven energy from the start. The July 21 date was not first revealed through a polished agency notice but by members Chaeyoung and Jiheon themselves, who announced it on the artist-messaging platform Fromm on July 4. Chaeyoung joked that she jumped the gun because "the company was too slow," a small moment that fans read as a sign of a group comfortable steering its own narrative. Jiheon simply reminded listeners that the wait was almost over.
Once the album went live, the early chart picture reflected the split reality of a mid-tier group with a devoted core: Vitamin ME entered as a new top-placement on Bugs while landing more modestly on the larger platforms in its first hours, a reminder that first-day numbers rarely tell the whole story for acts whose strength is longevity rather than an explosive opening. For Flover, the more meaningful signal was qualitative, with early listeners praising the album's cohesion and the confidence of a five-member arrangement that no longer feels like a group missing pieces.
What Comes Next
The immediate road ahead is the familiar Korean promotion cycle: music-show stages, variety appearances and the steady drip of performance content that turns a strong track into a slow-burn hit. This is exactly the terrain where fromis_9 has historically over-performed, converting clean choreography and a warm on-camera chemistry into repeat streams long after release week.
The competitive backdrop is crowded. The summer of 2026 has stacked comebacks from across the industry, with groups like i-dle and a wave of soloists all chasing the same seasonal spotlight. That density cuts both ways: it makes standing out harder, but it also concentrates casual-listener attention on summer releases, and a track engineered as a "vitamin" pick-me-up is designed precisely for that context. If Vitamin ME follows the trajectory of LIKE YOU BETTER and climbs steadily rather than spiking, it could give fromis_9 another multi-week chart run to point to as vindication of the ASND era.
Closing Thoughts
Stripped of the industry mechanics, Glow ME is a record about reinvention that happens to arrive exactly when the group needed one. The vitamin metaphor is almost too neat: a small, bright thing you reach for when you need a lift, promising a refreshing burst of energy on a hot day. But it also doubles as a thesis for where fromis_9 stands in 2026, a group that has shed members and labels and chosen to treat that thinning-out as clarification rather than loss.
Whether the charts ultimately agree is a question only the coming weeks can answer. What is already clear is that fromis_9 has staked out a confident, self-authored identity for its new chapter, and has done so with the kind of unbothered brightness that has always been its calling card. For a group re-introducing itself under a new name on the label door, sounding this sure of who you are is its own kind of statement.
한글 요약
프로미스나인이 2026년 7월 21일 정규 2집 Glow ME를 발매했습니다. 2023년 Unlock My World 이후 약 3년 만의 정규 앨범이자, 플레디스 엔터테인먼트를 떠나 새 소속사 ASND에서 내놓는 첫 정규작입니다. 타이틀곡 Vitamin ME는 라틴 리듬 기반의 그루브와 중독성 있는 멜로디로 그룹 특유의 밝고 상큼한 색깔을 유지하면서 새로운 매력을 더했고, 앨범은 총 10곡으로 '빛나는 나 자신을 발견하는 여정'을 주제로 삼았습니다.
이번 앨범이 특별한 이유는 멤버 전원이 작사 작업에 참여해 그룹 고유의 목소리를 담았다는 점, 그리고 대형 레이블을 떠난 뒤 처음으로 여름 시장에 도전하는 '독립 선언'의 성격을 띤다는 점입니다. 현재 프로미스나인은 송하영, 박지원, 이채영, 이나경, 백지헌 5인 체제로, 2025년 초 ASND와 계약하며 새로운 장을 열었습니다. 지난해 미니 6집 From Our 20's의 LIKE YOU BETTER가 멜론 톱100 상위권에 3주 연속 머물렀던 만큼, '여름 강자'로서의 저력을 다시 증명할 수 있을지가 관전 포인트입니다.
발매 초반 Vitamin ME는 벅스에서 신규 1위로 진입하는 등 코어 팬덤의 화력을 보여줬지만, 대형 플랫폼에서는 상대적으로 완만한 출발을 보였습니다. 다만 프로미스나인의 강점은 폭발적인 초동보다 음악방송과 각종 콘텐츠를 통한 꾸준한 상승세에 있어, 여름 내내 이어질 활동과 차트 흐름을 지켜볼 필요가 있습니다. i-dle을 비롯한 여러 그룹이 몰린 치열한 여름 경쟁 속에서, 새 이름표를 단 프로미스나인이 어떤 성적을 남길지 주목됩니다.
참고 / 출처: Sports Kyunghyang, allkpop, Wikipedia