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Around midnight on July 22, a familiar name showed up again on NewJeans’ official channels: ‘2026 Summer of NewJeans.’ Short clips and photos featuring Minji, Hanni, Haerin, and Hyein individually rolled out one after another, followed by a 59-second video with all four members together. The numbers scattered through the footage echoed July 22, 2022 — the day the group unveiled its debut track ‘Attention’ without any prior announcement — and rabbit imagery representing the fandom name Bunnies showed up throughout as well.
The moment fans lingered on longest came at the very end: a brief shot of all four members gathered together, looking at something off-screen, that cuts away almost as soon as it begins. No title for new music, no release date, no stage plans were announced. Still, given that there had been no official music content under the group’s name since ‘Supernatural’ in June 2024, this video was always going to be read as more than a simple anniversary post. The fact that all four appeared together again on the group’s official channel, after more than two years without a new song or a full-group stage, landed for fans as a signal in itself — the first one in a long while.
Still, calling this a ‘confirmed comeback’ would be premature. HYBE’s global communications team and ADOR described the content as a special film series marking the group’s fourth debut anniversary, adding that it was made because the four members wanted to spend the milestone together with fans. What the official announcement said was ‘content the four made together’; what it didn’t say was anything about an album or an activity schedule. Keeping those two sentences separate is the most important thing to do right now.
The Conflict Escalated After Min Hee-jin’s Removal as CEO
Boiled down to one sentence, the conflict between NewJeans and ADOR is a collision between the moment the members said their trust had broken down and the moment a court ruled that no contractual obligation had actually been violated. After Min Hee-jin stepped down as ADOR’s CEO in August 2024, the members demanded her reinstatement. Min was widely known as the person who had led NewJeans’ early planning and production, so for fans, too, this didn’t read as a simple executive reshuffle.
That November, the members held a press conference announcing they were terminating their exclusive contract with ADOR. ADOR, maintaining the contract remained valid, filed suit that December seeking confirmation of the contract’s validity, along with an injunction to block the members’ independent activities. From the moment both sides filed separate motions with the court, the conflict moved beyond a war of public statements and into formal litigation. Around this time, the group also announced plans to operate under a new name, ‘NJZ,’ but independent entertainment activities stopped once the court ruled on the injunction.
Here’s something worth knowing for readers outside Korea: exclusive-contract disputes among Korean idols aren’t resolved simply by each side claiming their feelings were hurt. Courts weigh the obligations written into the contract, whether the company genuinely had the ability and willingness to fulfill them, and whether any violation was serious enough to justify ending the contract. Even in an industry like K-pop, where trust between producer and artist matters enormously, proving that trust in legal terms is a separate question entirely.
The Court Ruled the Contract Still Stood
The Seoul Central District Court ruled in ADOR’s favor on October 30, 2025. The court found it difficult to conclude that Min Hee-jin’s dismissal alone constituted a breach of the exclusive contract between ADOR and NewJeans. Its reasoning: the contract contained no clause requiring Min specifically to hold the CEO position, and a change in leadership alone didn’t mean the company had lost its ability to manage or produce the group.
Immediately after the ruling, the members said their relationship of trust had broken down completely, making it difficult to continue operating normally, and signaled their intent to appeal. But reports that no appeal was filed by November’s deadline meant the first-instance ruling became final. That shift mattered quite a bit — the center of the legal dispute moved from ‘does the contract continue’ to ‘given that the contract continues, how do the members and the company talk to each other again.’
None of this means the court considered the members’ feelings or the issues they raised unimportant. The court was ruling on whether the legal conditions for ending an exclusive contract had been met. The trust issue the members kept raising, by contrast, is tied to something else entirely: whether the team can actually make music together again and stand in front of fans. The court’s ruling set the starting line, but it doesn’t do the work of rebuilding the relationship itself. Even with the ruling final, whether the members and the company can actually work together again remains a separate question still being watched.
From Five to Four: Sticking to What’s Actually Confirmed
After the ruling became final, discussions about the members’ return to ADOR continued. Haerin and Hyein were the first to signal their intent to return, and Hanni said she would continue activities after talks with ADOR. Minji was reportedly still in an ongoing conversation for a while, but her appearance in this fourth-anniversary content officially confirmed that, at minimum, all four members took part in making the video.
Danielle, on the other hand, isn’t part of the four-member content right now. ADOR said in December 2025 that it had determined Danielle would find it difficult to continue as a NewJeans member and an artist under the company, and notified her of the contract’s termination. At the same time, it stated it would pursue legal responsibility against a member of Danielle’s family and against Min Hee-jin. Danielle, for her part, called the other members family in a message to fans, but said there was no confirmed answer yet about her future path.
So ‘NewJeans is back’ is less accurate than ‘four members appeared together again under the NewJeans name.’ The fact that four members showed up isn’t the same claim as a decision that an album, concerts, or broadcast activities are happening under a four-member lineup. It’s natural for expectations to build inside the fandom, but if unconfirmed schedules or speculative teaser readings spread as if they were official announcements, that doesn’t help the members or the fans. The fact that the question of Danielle’s place hasn’t been settled yet is another reason to treat this announcement as an unfinished story rather than a closed conclusion.
This Video Is the Opening Scene of a Conversation, Not a Conclusion
Part of what made NewJeans so loved to begin with was an image that felt light and natural even inside K-pop’s highly engineered system. The past year and a half, though, has been filled with words like legal terminology, court rulings, statements, and appeal deadlines. This film doesn’t erase that weight in one stroke. Instead, it showed the most basic scene first: four people in the same frame.
What fans need right now is less a rush to conclusions and more a habit of checking official channels. ‘2026 Summer of NewJeans’ was released as an anniversary film, and no new music or formal comeback schedule has been announced yet. If the next announcement does come, it will likely spell out the album name, release date, participating members, and format of activities clearly. Until then, what Bunnies should watch for isn’t some cipher hidden in a rabbit teaser — it’s what words ADOR and the four members actually use to describe their next move.
Source: Yonhap News, October 30, 2025 & November 14, 2025; ADOR official statement, December 29, 2025; Forbes, July 21, 2026.
