ILLIT’s recent concert in Seoul, which kicked off their very first tour, “ILLIT LIVE PRESS START♥︎,” opened just like a game, with an opening sequence where the girls step out of a pixelated virtual world and into the real one. With every song ILLIT has officially released in Korea on the setlist, the show imagines each stage of their one year, 11-month journey as stages in a game. In a “Weverse Magazine” interview at the time of her debut, MINJU talked about how she “wanted to be on stage looking as happy as” other idols she’d seen. Two years later, standing in front of thousands of fans, she looked back on where she got her start, telling the crowd that performing for GLLIT that night reminded her why she wanted to become an idol in the first place. From dreams to reality, from sincerity to the seats. Below, we’ve put together a tour report with behind-the-scenes details on the creative vision and direction that went into “PRESS START♥︎,” along with comments from the group members themselves, to help the thrill of the show linger a little longer.

1. TOUR SCHEDULE

“PRESS START♥︎” spans seven cities across Asia, and the tour got off to a strong start in Seoul on March 14 and 15 at ticketLINK Live Arena. After a two-month break, ILLIT will head out again in June to see GLLIT in Aichi, Osaka, Fukuoka, Hyogo, Tokyo, and finally Hong Kong. The tour holds a particularly special meaning for Fukuoka and Tokyo natives MOKA and IROHA.

2. SETLIST

“The idea behind the opening”—the first section of the concert, called “START! (ILLIT CORE)”—“was to make it look like five girls from a game made entirely of pixels had jumped out into the real world,” Eum Hye Jeong, lead professional at HTS Concert Production Studio 2 and overall director of “PRESS START♥︎,” explained. ILLIT walked through pixelated hearts cascading down in a venue filled with all kinds of pink pixel art and the dreamy arpeggios of the Starlight remix of “Magnetic” and made their way into the real world. The first section, beginning with “Magnetic” and rounded out by “bamsopoong” and “little monster,” conjures up the magical-girl world the group introduced with their third mini album, “bomb.” The second section, “♡ (Only For You),” meanwhile, shines a light on the swirl of complicated feelings a girl experiences when falling in love. ILLIT belts out bold declarations of love in “Cherish (My Love)” and “I’ll Like You,” then carefully turns inward to capture hard-to-name feelings with “Pimple” and the Korean version of “Almond Chocolate.” Eum added that this setlist of mixed moods and tempos “was built around the flow of the lyrics to capture the typical joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure girls in love feel.”

The third section, “ILLIT X GLLIT,” opened with performances of the songs the girls performed when competing on “R U Next?,” the show where ILLIT ultimately got its start, to thunderous cheers. The group then returned to the narrative thread of their pixelated world with “My World.” Starting there and continuing through “oops!,” “Midnight Fiction,” and “Secret Quest,” ILLIT offers a glimpse into the lives of girls their age, daydreaming their way through worlds of their own making one moment, chatting away with friends the next. A particular highlight was during “Secret Quest” when MINJU sings the line “with you briefly calling out sweetly” and the rest of the group calls out her name. In the fourth section, “NO MORE CUTE,” there’s a video of them in girly dresses dancing blank-faced to techno, followed by a performance of a house remix of “Lucky Girl Syndrome.” A representative for the A&R team for ILLIT under BELIFT LAB revealed that the production style and arrangement of the background music for the video was dreamed up to be “music that wouldn’t feel out of place at a fashion show.” The way ILLIT moves between the cute side of girls their age and whipping a crowd into a frenzy over a house beat shows they aren’t boxed in by any one concept and that there’s plenty more where that came from.

The group had really been looking forward to performing “NOT ME,” the final song on the setlist, as it was their first time singing it live. YUNAH shared that she “thought the image could show a different side of the group,” so she “focused on the dance moves and facial expressions while practicing.” After they finished singing “NOT ME,” YUNAH, MINJU, WONHEE, and IROHA made their way back to a pink sports car to runway-ready house music, and the main show closed with MOKA firing a gun into the air as heart-shaped confetti rained down from above. “They might be sweet on the outside, but they’re tougher than anyone on the inside,” Eum said of the vision for the concert closer that recreated a shot out of the “NOT CUTE ANYMORE” music video. “You usually think of practical effects like smoke to go with a gunshot, but for ‘PRESS START♥︎,’ we chose to blanket the whole venue in heart confetti instead. I think that was the moment that broke all expectations and let them own the stage in the most ILLIT way possible.”

3. BEHIND THE SCENES
The first section, “START!”—subtitled “ILLIT CORE”—has bits of ILLIT woven into everything from the microphones to the hidden stage and the confetti. Eum mentioned the incredible response to “bamsopoong” from the crowd at the concert and shared the story behind how the microphones were designed to look like magic wands to drive home the magical girl image. “Ribbons are essential to the ILLIT aesthetic, but using ribbons alone didn’t feel ILLIT enough,” she explained. “We made ribbons shaped like angel wings and added a crescent moon in the center to get that classic magical girl look. When I saw the crowd’s reaction, I could tell that GLLIT really love cute things.’” A secondary stage kept hidden off to the side of the main stage until the transition from “bamsopoong” to “little monster” and decked out with a giant retro arcade machine also drove home the show’s central idea that “PRESS START♥︎” is a game ILLIT and GLLIT play together. Eum explained that the giant set piece was “designed based on the game console imagery in the concert poster to keep a consistent visual thread from that very first poster all the way to the show itself,” and that the goal was to give the audience “that ‘wow’ moment when the set piece hidden behind the LED screen came into view.”

The second unexpected stage was a classroom set, an extension of the Sarangnee Club from the “Cherish (My Love)” music video. Eum explained that the setlist “was arranged so that ‘Pimple’ and ‘Almond Chocolate (Korean Ver.)’—the songs that felt most at home in a school setting—could be performed on the classroom set.” After trading “I’ll like you!” back and forth with GLLIT, ILLIT took their seats in the classroom and shifted the mood entirely by performing “Pimple” live for the very first time. The A&R team noted that “when songs are constantly transitioning from one to the next, the key to getting the audience to focus as quickly as possible is the artist’s ability to immerse themselves in the emotions of the moment,” adding that “even though ‘I’ll Like You’ and ‘Pimple’ are completely different in genre and tempo, YUNAH no doubt made it easier for the rest of the group to grab hold of that emotional thread with her opening lines.” Before launching into “Pimple,” YUNAH closed her eyes, took a breath, and slipped quickly into the song’s quieter mood as she began to sing. Also exclusive to “PRESS START♥︎” was an acoustic arrangement of the first verse of “Almond Chocolate” built around piano rather than the lush string arrangement that opens the original. “The first verse was arranged for piano and vocals only with no choreography so the audience could focus entirely on ILLIT’s singing,” the A&R team explained. To put on the strongest live performance possible, they also “let the group practice with just the instrumental track and no backing vocals whatsoever so they could listen to their own voices,” giving them a chance to “repeatedly run through the whole of section two from start to finish without stopping” as well. “They could’ve felt some pressure from having all the focus on their singing, but the group pulled it off, and thanks to that, the song’s message came through clearly.”

The videos before each upcoming section of the show also served as a kind of preview and warm-up beforehand. “The focus was on the chance to make ‘PRESS START♥︎’ a show everyone can enjoy,” Eum explained, “so instead of having a heavy narrative run through the videos, we tried to make each one its own little window into what makes ILLIT so fun.” One video in particular—an ILLIT take on the “Immersive Interactive Warm-Up” that went viral on TikTok and Instagram—took over social media in its own way after the show, where fans dubbed it a “MZ VCR,” or Gen Z video. According to Eum, the idea arose because they “wanted time where the audience could actively join in and have fun with their light sticks, even while a video was playing.” As the audience followed onscreen prompts and ILLIT appeared to react to the crowd’s movements in real time in the prerecorded video, it felt like ILLIT and GLLIT were beating a level of a game together. The result was something novel, where even when the idols stepped offstage to get ready for the next song, the whole crowd was on their feet, following along with their light sticks in hand.

The hairstyles ILLIT wore at “PRESS START♥︎” were also shaped by input from the group members. For “Scrum”—a song from their time on “R U Next?,” the competition show where ILLIT first came together—MOKA and WONHEE suggested styling their hair the same way they’d worn it back when they first performed it on TV. “For the first night, I sported the hairstyle I had during ‘R U Next?’ again,” MOKA said, with WONHEE adding, “Since we were performing what we competed with, I started imagining what GLLIT’s reaction would be like and suggested that style from there.” Performing the “R U Next?” songs “Desperate” and “Scrum” wasn’t just a nostalgic look back at who ILLIT was before their debut—it was also a chance to show how far they’ve come. “Since there’s traces of who I was before debuting as ILLIT” in “Desperate,” MINJU said, “I worked really hard to show how much I’ve grown” in the two years since last performing the song. IROHA, too, found performing the song an emotional experience. “From the moment I went up on the lift, I could hear the cheers from GLLIT getting louder, and I felt something welling up inside me,” she said. “The fact that I was doing it in front of GLLIT kept hitting me all throughout the show, but especially after I got to the part I sang on ‘R U Next?’ before.”

4. GLLIT
“Seeing GLLIT get moving and singing along with us during the encore was so moving,” WONHEE said. “I loved how it felt like we were all putting on this fun show together.” She said the encore was the most memorable moment of “PRESS START♥︎” for her. To make up for the lack of a runway stage, the group made their way down to the floor and into the crowd to greet GLLIT up close and personal. They also brought back the “infinite oops!”—a tradition that started at their fan concert “2025 ILLIT GLITTER DAY” where the chorus of “oops!” is looped again and again, letting ILLIT and the whole audience go wild together . With lyrics encouraging listeners to “kick our worries out for three days, shoo!” so they can keep “playin’ with you” without it ever getting old, “oops!” was the perfect song to keep the fun going all the way to the very end. The group got really playful with it, shouting their “We have been ILLIT!” sign-off and heading offstage, only to come running back out when the chorus kicked in again. At one point they made the crowd promise to put their phones away and just enjoy the show. IROHA, for her part, said the image that would stick with her most was “every single GLLIT in the place putting their phone away and waving their light stick around.” With that final stretch of “infinite oops!” and ILLIT and GLLIT going wild together, the Seoul leg of “PRESS START♥︎” came to a close. “The goal was for both ILLIT and GLLIT to have so much fun they’d feel completely exhilarated and then head home,” Eum said, adding that “the charm of ‘infinite oops!’ is watching ILLIT dig deep for that energy and how they’re still adorable even when they’re exhausted. I hope GLLIT will hold onto this memory for a long time—this youthful side of ILLIT when they’re new on the scene.”

ILLIT gave their very first tour the 8-bit game treatment, bringing those retro game stages to the concert stage. But even with a setlist that spans the full breadth of their catalog, ILLIT isn’t racing heedlessly to simply clear each level. The girls all got on the same page, worked out how to put on the best show possible, and pulled that plan off flawlessly, taking time to lock eyes with thousands of GLLIT from the stage. Having watched the group prepare, the A&R team said it was “a show that made clear just how much ILLIT loves performing and how much serious thought they put into giving GLLIT the very best they have to offer.” ILLIT clearly felt the same way. “Thanks to GLLIT being there with us, we were able to press that start button just right, right from the start,” they said during the concert. “This specific moment may be coming to a close, but it’s just the start for us, so we hope you’ll keep going with us, just like today and like always.” “PRESS START♥︎” runs through August 22.

5. +1: To GLLIT who made it out to our first tour
YUNAH: I hope you were able to take away some amazing memories from the show that you can relive again and again. And if there was anyone in the audience who wasn’t a fan yet, I hope the show gave you a taste of us like you haven’t seen before. Considering how much GLLIT was looking forward to our first tour, my only thought while practicing was to make sure we didn’t let you down. I was really nervous, but thank you for finding even that side of me sweet and endearing. I’m only going to get better from here, and the same goes for the whole group!

MINJU: I was so excited. I’ve been dreaming about holding our own concert for so long. I made sure to give it everything I had so that everyone who came would feel like their time was well spent and walk away with nothing but good memories. I couldn’t wait to show the microphones we had custom-made for the tour to you, either, and seeing how much you loved them made me so happy. I really hope you left the show feeling nothing but excited and happy, and I’d love it even more if it made you want to come back again throughout the rest of the tour!

MOKA: What made me happier than anything was seeing you have a good time at the show. It meant so much to me to get to perform in concert the songs from “R U Next?” again now that we’ve debuted. Knowing how much you were going to love those songs made getting ready for them feel like putting a surprise together. I hope everyone who came out to see us had a great time. To all the fans coming to the rest of the shows—I can’t wait to see you!

WONHEE: I was really excited considering it’s our first tour and it’s been a while since we’d seen you. I put everything I have into getting ready because I wanted to give you all some great memories you could look back on. We also performed some songs live for the first time, so I also really wanted to show you something new. Thank you so much for taking the time to come see us! I want to do more and more concerts where I can get better and put on a great show for you all. Hope you’ll come along with us!

IROHA: It was such a blast spending time with you at “GLITTER DAY” that I went into preparing for this one feeling just as excited! “NOT ME” and the subunit songs were surprises, so I worked really hard to make them the kind of performances that would make you go “this is amazing!” and give us a big thumbs up. I still have a lot to work on, but I’m going to keep filling in those gaps, so I hope you’ll stick around on our journey. I hope you’ll be able to look back on our first tour and think about how much fun you had!