Dispatch’s ‘D’ICON’ Unveils Second Lineup TXT, aespa, ENHYPEN, IVE, and RIIZE Open Up Like Never Before

Five of K-pop’s defining acts just proved that even at the top, nobody considers the climb finished.

“Rather than fixing a final goal, I just want to keep climbing.” That single line from IVE’s Wonyoung as credited in the original release sets the emotional register for everything that follows. Because this isn’t your typical glossy group photobook drop. It’s a meditation, dressed up as merchandise, on what it means to never quite call yourself finished.

Dispatch has unveiled the second lineup for D’ICON: D’FESTA The Origin Edition, and it’s a formidable one: TOMORROW X TOGETHER, aespa, ENHYPEN, IVE, and RIIZE join a project that already feels like one of the most ambitious things the outlet has attempted in its history.

A 15-Year Victory Lap, Told Through 48 Artists

D’FESTA The Origin isn’t a standalone photobook campaign it’s the merchandise arm of something much bigger. To mark its 15th anniversary, Dispatch built a full physical art exhibition at MPX Gallery inside Seoul’s IFC Mall in Yeouido, running from late October through November 30, tracing nine acts’ evolution from trainee days to global stardom: Stray Kids, TOMORROW X TOGETHER, aespa, ENHYPEN, IVE, RIIZE, CORTIS, BTS, and G-Dragon 48 artists in total. The exhibition weaves together photography, film, spatial design, and interactive installations, treating the subjects less like idols being profiled and more like artists being retrospectively curated, the way a gallery might treat a painter’s career-spanning show.

The first lineup, revealed earlier this month, centered G-Dragon, BTS, Stray Kids, and newcomers CORTIS. This second wave shifts the lens toward a slightly younger generation of acts but the throughline Dispatch is drawing stays consistent: these aren’t “arrival” stories. They’re “still becoming” stories.

TOMORROW X TOGETHER: Holding the Line Until Sunrise

TXT’s segment leans into an image of endurance blue light, thin fog, five members standing watch for a sunrise that hasn’t broken yet. It’s a quietly powerful metaphor for a group that debuted in 2019 as part of Big Hit’s post-BTS generation and has spent years building a devoted global fanbase through introspective, often melancholic concept work across album series like The Dream Chapter and The Chaos Chapter.

Member Yeonjun’s quote threads the needle precisely: “When I’m doing something familiar, I try to do it even better than before. When I’m doing something new, I try to enjoy that moment.” It’s a tidy encapsulation of a group now mature enough to have “classics” in their catalog, yet still visibly hungry to experiment a tension every long-running idol act eventually has to manage.

aespa: Layering New Color Over the Original Palette

aespa’s concept embraces something almost architectural: time stacked in layers, new color painted over the group’s original debut palette. It’s a fitting visual for a group whose entire identity — real members paired with AI-generated avatar counterparts has always been about doubled, layered existence. Since debuting in 2020 with “Black Mamba,” aespa has built one of the most distinctive world-building concepts in modern K-pop, and 2026 has kept that momentum alive with their SYNK: COMPLEXITY world tour and the album Lemonade, continuing to expand the mythology around Æ and the group’s digital-physical duality.

Giselle’s quote cuts through the conceptual framing with something plainly human: “My belief in this dream never wavered.” Dispatch frames that conviction as the load-bearing structure underneath everything the thing that let a genre-bending, technologically audacious concept hold together over six years.

ENHYPEN: A Gem Still Being Cut

ENHYPEN’s six members are framed as six distinct colors forming a single spectrum pressure transforming into something harder and more refined, the way carbon becomes diamond. The metaphor carries extra weight in 2026. In March, founding member Heeseung departed the group, and ENHYPEN made their first comeback as a six-piece in August with The Sin: Bliss their first new chapter since forming through the 2020 survival show I-LAND. That the group chose a “jewel still being cut” framing for this project, mid-transition, feels less like marketing language and more like an honest self-assessment.

Jay’s quote makes that explicit: “The gem that is ENHYPEN still hasn’t been fully cut.” It’s a group acknowledging, publicly, that reinvention is ongoing not finished, not resolved, still catching light unevenly.

IVE: Elegance as Armor

IVE’s segment is the most painterly of the five members reflecting off one another, confidence framed as a kind of self-protective grace. Since debuting in 2021 with “Eleven,” IVE has built a brand around exactly that quality: polished, assured, difficult to rattle. The group returned with new music on October 26, continuing one of the most commercially consistent runs of any fourth-generation girl group.

Leader Yujin’s quote reframes pressure as something to metabolize rather than resist: “When I feel the weight of expectations, I just try to trust it. The people who chose our music must have had a reason.” Dispatch reads this as elegance functioning as resilience poise not as a performance, but as armor.

RIIZE: A Spark Still Finding Its Orbit

RIIZE gets the most kinetic framing of the group a small ember catching into flame, star-like energy still tracing out its orbit rather than fixed in place. It’s an apt read for SM Entertainment’s youngest major act in this lineup, which just marked its third anniversary with a two-day fan meeting at Inspire Arena drawing 23,000 fans, and used the event to unveil a new digital single released on October 26.

Member Eunseok’s line lands as a kind of personal manifesto: “No matter how high we climb, I’ve always promised myself this feeling won’t change.” It’s the exact sentiment the whole D’ICON project seems built around ambition that doesn’t calcify into ego, youth that keeps its footing even as the altitude increases.

What’s Actually Inside the Box

Each of the five editions ships as a 240-page photobook with individual member covers, accompanied by five holographic mini postcards featuring handwritten notes, three selfie photocards, and a monochrome folded photo insert containing seven black-and-white portrait cuts that can be torn out and used individually a tactile, collector-oriented touch that’s become something of a signature for Dispatch’s physical-goods arm.

Pre-orders for the second lineup open November 11 at 2 p.m. KST and run through November 22 at 11:59 p.m. KST, with official release set for January 22, 2027. The photobooks will be available through D’ICON Mall, D’PARTMENT (the official Japanese store), Weverse Shop, KakaoTalk Gift, YES24, Aladin, Kyobo Book Centre, and K-town4u.

The Bigger Picture

What makes D’FESTA The Origin worth paying attention to beyond any single group’s chapter is the curatorial thesis Dispatch is making about K-pop itself at its 15-year mark: that even its most commercially dominant acts, spanning debut years from 2019 to 2023, describe themselves in strikingly similar terms. Not arrived. Not finished. Still climbing, still being cut, still waiting for sunrise. For an industry so often flattened into chart numbers and comeback cycles, that’s a more interesting story than any single album rollout and it’s exactly the kind of narrative a 15th-anniversary retrospective is built to tell.