At 8 p.m. on April 10, darkness had already settled over the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California. The Sahara stage, where KATSEYE was set to perform, had a shoulder-to-shoulder audience before the show even began. As the hour approached, an enormous crowd flooded in to encircle the stage. When the KATSEYE logo appeared on the screen above the dark stage, every eye in the crowd locked in. The second the intro video started, everyone erupted into cheers. KATSEYE had weathered the desert winds and was about to bring the night to life. “I felt this rush of adrenaline, but also a sense of calmness,” Lara would later say. “I kept telling myself, I am in my element, and I’m meant to be right here.” And so began KATSEYE’s first Coachella performance, spanning both April 10 and 17.
KATSEYE opened their set with their very first performance of “PINKY UP.” The entire crowd became engrossed by the song, which had only been released a day earlier. “‘PINKY UP’ has a sound that I think appeals not just to core fans but to festival audiences in general,” Jay Ihn, SVP and Head of Creative Production at HYBE x Geffen Records (HxG), explained. “We also wanted to demonstrate the full force of KATSEYE right out of the gate when all eyes are on them.” Sure enough, much of the crowd was chanting “up” to the beat and mimicking the iconic pinky finger move all throughout. “We were all extremely excited to perform ‘PINKY UP’ for the first time and kick off the new era with a Coachella debut,” Sophia said. “We knew the fans who were there in the beginning of our set were our EYEKONS waiting to hear the new stuff.” Ihn would later recall the show as “the moment that proved once again what kind of performance is possible when you’re KATSEYE.”
Twenty minutes before the show, Jakey and Marty, two EYEKONS waiting in front of the Sahara, both agreed that “PINKY UP” was the song they were most looking forward to. “When they were announced” for the Coachella lineup, “I was just like, ‘Please be Sahara, please be Sahara,’” Jakey said. Equipped with LED screens and an elaborate lighting rig, the massive Sahara Tent is a signature dance floor gem in the Coachella crown. That setting helped shape the show’s structure. Back-to-back openers “PINKY UP” and “Debut” naturally got the crowd dancing and pulled them deeper into the music. According to Ihn, the onscreen 3D visuals were designed with “the sheer scale of the Sahara’s big, wide LED display” in mind, and went through endless revisions in pursuit of “visuals that felt distinctly KATSEYE and set them apart from the typical pop concert aesthetic.” “Wallpaper*,” a British design publication, noted that the onscreen visuals, combined with the practical set mimicking a brick building, transported the audience to “KATSEYE City” for a rooftop performance. The result was a KATSEYE spectacle special, purpose-built for the structure and sheer scale of the Sahara.
“It was absolutely amazing to see so much energy from that huge crowd, not just watching but cheering them on and enjoying the music with every cell in their body,” Son Sung Deuk, Executive Creator with HxG, said. During the choruses of songs like “Touch,” “Gameboy,” and “Internet Girl,” almost everyone in the crowd danced along with the iconic moves. Some were making TikTok videos or teaching others the choreography. During “Gabriela,” people threw their arms around each other’s shoulders and swayed together. “It was striking to see audiences creating their own content and visuals to enjoy the show, including during last year’s tour,” Ihn said, noting that the culture of crowd engagement “is precisely what gives KATSEYE’s content its reach.” It’s likely the same reason Son keeps “the ability for fans to engage with the music and choreography in mind from the earliest stages of making an album,” too. “The crowd’s energy also pushed us to give everything back,” Daniela said, highlighting the particularly hot crowd at Coachella and how the audience helps “keep the energy high the whole time.”
“Our goal was clear: to clearly convey what makes KATSEYE special through song and dance, with the group actively connecting and communicating with the audience from onstage,” Son explained. As such, they “weren’t looking so much to direct them in any specific ways as to demonstrate their effortlessly cool free-spiritedness in a way that fit the energy of the place.” The approach could be seen in the way the group moved fluidly across the stage during “Mean Girls” and the rooftop party they threw toward the end of the song. For “My Way,” a relatively laid-back song, KATSEYE “integrated live harmonies which the fans haven’t seen from us yet” to keep the crowd engaged, Sophia explained. In an emotional moment, the audience turned on the flashes on their phones and sang along to the chorus. The group personally suggested they set up “microphones on stands to highlight the earnestness of the vocals” in the song, Son said. He described “designing the dynamics of the set and blocking to keep the energy flowing like one continuous show,” with the intention being to create an audience experience where fans could “truly ‘watch’ the performance while listening along.”
The group closed their set with “M.I.A” and “Gnarly,” breaking loose with all the energy they had built up over the 45-minute show. The girls tore across every corner of the stage, the crowd chanting along with a deafening scream. They brought the show to a spectacular close right at its peak, going full force into the “Gnarly” dance break, headbanging and bouncing wholeheartedly to the beat all around the Sahara. Immediately after the show, a fan named Doctor Dot called the dance break the most memorable part of the concert. “Visuals on point,” the self-described longtime K-pop fan exclaimed. “Choreography, visuals, stage, everything!” Her reaction speaks to how KATSEYE’s performances have all the visual thrill of K-pop group choreography it takes to meet the expectations of hardcore fans of the genre. At the same time, the pop-star aura and free-spirited energy they bring to the stage is more than enough to excite Coachella festivalgoers, who come to the event to enjoy a wide spectrum of styles. Thanks to coming up in both the K-pop and global spaces, KATSEYE is uniquely positioned to appeal to both sides of the equation.
“Coachella is the gathering place of the hottest artists leading the way, unconstrained by genre,” Son said, noting the symbolic weight of the event. “It’s the festival that most clearly shows the direction artists should be moving in, which I believe is exactly where KATSEYE is headed.” As such, the group’s performance of “Golden” with HUNTR/X during the first weekend cemented their cultural importance in the global music world. As “The New York Times” observed, performances with surprise guests have become a part of Coachella’s new identity, and the collaboration between KATSEYE and HUNTR/X had the kind of symbolic momentum that will be remembered for its significance. “At the first meeting with the HUNTR/X team, we expressed a hope that the collaboration would be seen as a major cultural moment in pop music,” Ihn said. The two groups “were both shaped by K-pop and are beloved by diverse groups of fans around the world,” which is how “Golden,” one of the defining anthems of 2025, came to be performed at KATSEYE’s first Coachella concert. Ihn said she was proud that “many media outlets rushed to cover the collaboration, and went on to review it positively, saying the two groups ‘closed the Honmoon together.’” “They were all so sweet and kind, which made the whole process even more enjoyable and helped us create an even better stage together,” Yoonchae later said. “Singing the Korean intro was especially special to me. It felt like I was able to share a part of my culture on a global stage, which made the moment even more meaningful.”
“Artists ultimately prove themselves onstage,” as Ihn put it, and KATSEYE’s Coachella set made immediate waves. “The Guardian,” citing longtime Coachella attendees, reported that the crowds in the southeast corner of the festival grounds around the Sahara at the time of KATSEYE’s performance were the largest they’d ever seen there. A “Billboard” piece on the post-Coachella effect observed that KATSEYE’s set rivaled headliner Sabrina Carpenter’s in terms of crowd size and hype, noting that streams of KATSEYE songs jumped 74% in the four days after the show to 21.6 million. “PINKY UP” went on to peak at No. 28 on the “Billboard” Hot 100 and No. 14 on the UK’s Official Singles Top 100, setting a new record on both. As of May 14, “PINKY UP” had charted for four consecutive weeks on both sides of the Atlantic, while “Touch”—released back in July 2024—returned to the Official Singles Top 100 for three weeks running. After headliners Justin Bieber and Sabrina Carpenter, “PINKY UP” is now the most-viewed performance from this year on Coachella’s YouTube channel. “It feels like a big milestone, but also just the beginning of what we’re capable of,” Megan said later. “Performing at Coachella gave us a new level of confidence. Being on a stage like that pushes you to trust yourself and your team more than ever,” she added. “Moments like that really remind you how much you rely on one another. For KATSEYE, it means growth and validation. It shows that we’re stepping into bigger spaces and that our music is reaching people in a real way.”
Asked what makes KATSEYE stand out among the many artists who performed at Coachella, Doctor Dot answered with one word: “Diversity.” She cheered them on by quoting “Golden” and hoping to see the group “goin’ up, up up.” Marty and Jakey each emphasized KATSEYE’s ability to connect and resonate with a global fanbase. “I think they’re really inspiring for the younger fans,” Marty said, while Jakey talked about how “seeing so many different members from different cultures all forming into one group” is “great,” adding that “they’re big allies of the LGBTQ community.” Rainbow pride flags could indeed be spotted dotting the crowd throughout the 45-minute concert. Coachella has always had its finger on the pulse of where music and culture are headed, and for Daniela, it had been a dream of hers since she was just two. Somewhere in that crowd, someone watched as KATSEYE took to the stage, dreaming a dream of their own. And the inspiration that hangs in the air after Coachella can be summed up in the words Lara beamed with from the stage: “Anything is possible. All we want to do is inspire, and we love you.”