[CHICAGO] "Missed You, Chicago" BTS Picks Up Where It Left Off at Soldier Field

CHICAGO — Seven years after BTS last performed at Soldier Field, the group returned Aug. 27 to a Chicago crowd more than ready to pick up where it had left off.

That anticipation was already visible outside the stadium hours before BTS took the stage for the first Chicago stop of its "ARIRANG" World Tour. Fans walked through the crowds handing out homemade freebies, while others gathered to talk about past concerts, the songs they hoped to hear and their excitement for the night ahead. Inside, fans started their own waves across the stands, and by the scheduled 8 p.m. start, a stadium-wide chant of "BTS! BTS!" echoed around Soldier Field.

The show ultimately began around 22 minutes late, but the extra wait did little to drain the excitement. When "Hooligan" finally began, much of Soldier Field immediately rose to its feet.

"Finally back. Missed you, Chicago," Jung Kook told the crowd, while Jimin appeared equally happy to return. "Feels so good to be back," he said. "You guys know how to party. Show me what you got today."

Chicago quickly did. Fan chants carried from the floor to the upper reaches of Soldier Field throughout the night, eventually catching the members' attention. "I can hear you from the floor all the way to the very top. You guys are incredible," Jung Kook told fans. Jimin encouraged them to go even further, adding, "Let's sing even louder on the next song and really have some fun tonight!"

The "ARIRANG" tour's 360-degree in-the-round stage helped make that exchange feel surprisingly intimate for a stadium show. With runways extending in multiple directions, the members continuously shifted their attention around Soldier Field, allowing different sections to get a closer view throughout the night.

Although the production largely followed the framework established at previous stops, Chicago gave familiar portions of the show a different feel, particularly whenever BTS reached further back into its catalog. "MIC Drop" immediately raised the volume, followed by "Not Today," but "Fire" pushed the crowd into another gear. Large sections of Soldier Field jumped together through the chorus, and when the song ended, fans nearby could be seen catching their breath and laughing before the next performance had even begun.

The energy continued through "Body to Body" and "IDOL," with the latter expanding across the stadium floor with dozens of dancers, large flags and ribbons. Against the scale of the production, some of the night's smallest moments still earned equally loud reactions. V appeared wearing a cap with "Chicago" written across the front, earning immediate cheers for the local touch, while RM later returned after an outfit change wearing Pikachu glasses, drawing laughter throughout the stadium.

The members grew increasingly playful as the night went on. At one point, RM jokingly told the audience to "keep your sanity for now," only for V to immediately shoot back, "I'll take your sanity!" The exchange earned another roar from the crowd and captured the loose mood developing between the members and fans.

By the time BTS moved through "Come Over," "Butter" and "Dynamite," the concert was approaching one of the most anticipated parts of the "ARIRANG" tour: its rotating surprise-song segment. Even the members appeared unsure about what was coming. "Even I don't know what's next. But with you guys, it doesn't matter," V said, while Suga added, "We don't know what the next song is either. This is exciting!"

Chicago's answer took Soldier Field all the way back to 2014. "Tomorrow," from BTS' second EP "Skool Luv Affair," came first, drawing an immediate roar as fans recognized its opening. The second selection, "Hip Hop Phile," made the moment even more notable as it marked the song's first appearance in the surprise-song rotation since the "ARIRANG" World Tour began.

Part of the fun was watching the members remember the songs in real time. They laughed as they worked through lyrics and choreography they had not regularly performed in years, occasionally hesitating or looking toward one another as pieces came back to them. V and Jimin appeared particularly quick to remember portions of the choreography, while Suga was caught struggling to recall some of the lyrics, adding to the spontaneity of the moment.

The audience needed considerably less help remembering. Thousands of voices filled in the lyrics, turning the two tracks into one of the loudest portions of the night and reinforcing a pattern that had already emerged during "MIC Drop," "Not Today" and "Fire": the further BTS reached into its older catalog, the louder Chicago seemed to get.

As the concert wound down, the members reflected on what returning to Chicago meant to them. V said that he had been so excited to return that he had barely slept the night before, joking that any concerns about giving less than 100% disappeared once he felt the crowd's energy. By the end of the show, he estimated he had given "140%."

For RM, the return carried a more personal connection. He recalled visiting the Art Institute of Chicago in 2018, an experience he said sparked his interest in the art world. "Seven, eight years from that, I am opening my exhibition in America," he said. RM then described the tour as being about "interactions and communion," pointing to seeing one another face to face and singing, dancing and jumping together. "You guys were 10 out of 10," he told the crowd.

Jung Kook, meanwhile, looked back on memories of performing in the rain during one of BTS' previous Chicago concerts. Returning to the city and performing again, he said, made him even happier than he remembered feeling then. "I really missed you," he told fans before thanking them for coming and promising to rest up for the following night's show.

Seven years is a long gap between concerts, but there was little about BTS' first night back in Chicago that felt unfamiliar. From the chants before the group appeared to the thousands of voices singing along to "Tomorrow" and "Hip Hop Phile" more than two hours later, Soldier Field hardly felt like a crowd relearning how to welcome BTS back. Instead, the night seemed to prove RM's point: after years apart, seeing each other face to face and singing, dancing and jumping together made it surprisingly easy to pick up where they had left off.