BLACKPINK marked ten years since its debut with a small gathering of fans in Seoul, an intimate celebration that has drawn as much criticism as goodwill. All four members, Jennie, Jisoo, Lisa and Rose, turned out on Saturday to meet a select group of supporters at the National Museum of Korea.

The milestone is real. The group debuted in August 2016 and grew into one of the most recognizable acts in pop, but the way it chose to mark a decade has left part of its fan base feeling shortchanged.

A celebration that felt too small

The complaints center on scale and timing. Only 40 fans were admitted to the anniversary event, down sharply from the 88 who attended the group's eighth anniversary gathering in 2024, and the invitation arrived with almost no warning, announced on Thursday with roughly nine hours to apply.

The eligibility rules narrowed the field further. Access was limited to fans who held paid memberships on the Weverse platform as of July 31, and the original announcement said the members would appear only depending on their schedules, leaving supporters unsure until late whether all four would show.

Merchandise, but little else

For an anniversary of this weight, some fans expected more than a single event. Beyond a merchandise line, there were few advance projects to mark the ten years, a gap that made the celebration feel thinner than the occasion seemed to call for.

The merchandise itself leaned into the setting. Released Saturday under the National Museum's MU:DS brand, the collection ran to seven items, among them a pink moon jar and a paper fan, pairing the group's imagery with Korean craft motifs.

The members respond

The members did not dodge the discontent. Jisoo addressed it directly, saying the group had originally wanted to see many more people and that there seemed to have been a problem in their communication. She said she felt sorry about that, an unusually candid acknowledgment from an act of BLACKPINK's stature.

The others struck a warmer note. Rose reflected that the decade did not feel like ten years had passed, while Lisa spoke of her nervousness and said she had been listening to BLACKPINK songs while preparing for the reunion.

A decade, and a lesson

The group has been largely absent from home stages of late, with its last Korean appearance the concerts in Goyang in July 2025, which raised the stakes for how it would return to mark the anniversary.

Ten years in, BLACKPINK remains one of the biggest names in the genre, and a modest fan meeting will not dent that. But the backlash is a reminder that for a fandom this devoted, how a milestone is handled can matter as much as the milestone itself, and that scale and communication are not details but the message.