IVE Returns After 8 Months With Looks Can Kill Mini Album This October

IVE's comeback has a date: the group will drop their new mini album Looks Can Kill on October 26, with a pre-release track landing a week ahead on the 19th. Starship Entertainment teased the announcement with a 19-second video posted to IVE's social channels, showing the group's logo blazing across the face of a high-rise building in Seoul, the city's landmarks visible in the background behind projection-mapped text that read "IVE Spin-Off Release 2026. 10. 19".

The return marks roughly eight months since IVE last put out new music in Korea. Their second studio album REVIVE+, released in February, was a commercial sweep: the double title track "BANG BANG" topped both the Melon and Genie monthly charts and collected nine wins across music broadcast programs. That's a high bar to clear, and the Looks Can Kill campaign framing it as a "spin-off release" suggests Starship is letting the group stretch creatively rather than simply following the same playbook.

The timing is deliberately bold. October is shaping up to be one of the more crowded comeback months in recent memory, with RIIZE, ILLIT, NMIXX, and Jeonghan x Joshua among the acts returning in the same window. IVE stepping into that field off the back of a completed world tour, SHOW WHAT I AM, which covered Japan dome dates alongside stops across Asia, Oceania, and North America, means they arrive with momentum rather than rust.

The pre-release track on the 19th should give fans a first sense of where Looks Can Kill is headed conceptually before the full album drops a week later. Given how deliberately the teaser video leaned into the Seoul skyline imagery, the visual direction already feels like a statement.