With every passing day, Stray Kids continue their journey on the road to success. The eight-member Korean boy group started up in 2018 and has gained a massive fan base since then. Under the leadership of JYP, their entertainment company, the group came together in a survival show in 2017 called Stray Kids. The group went from performing small, public concerts with little to no recognition to having recently won “Album of the Year” in one of Asia’s largest and most respected idol award shows, the Mnet Asian Music Awards, or MAMA for short. The MAMA awards work similarly to the Grammys, as they are the Asian equivalent, in the sense that professional judges choose the winners in each category, except for the “Fans’ choice” sections.
On that note, Stray Kids had been invited to and performed in the MAMA show in previous years. The group’s first appearance was on December 10 and 12, 2018, where they performed their own songs like “My Pace”, “P.A.C.E.”, “Hellevator”, and “District 9” and covered songs from other groups like Twice’s “Like OOH-AHH” and Exo’s “Overdose” and “Growl”. This performance solidified their title as “Best New Male Artist”, their first MAMA award of many to come. While they didn’t attend the 2019 and 2020 events, partly due to COVID, they still won “Worldwide Fans’ Choice Top 10” both years, an award which they’ve won every year since.
They returned in 2021 with performances of their songs “CHEESE”, “Hey, monster”, and “Thunderous” for which they won “Best Dance Performance – Male Group”. Their careers started to see a large shift as they entered 2022, which is referred to as their “Global Breakout Year”. In the 2022 show, they performed their hit songs “Venom” and “Maniac” and won “Best Male Group” for that year. Although they started becoming recognised globally in 2022, nothing compares to the global success they achieved in 2023 with their “5-Star” album era, one of the first to reach top numbers on Billboard charts in such a short amount of time.
While they didn’t perform on MAMA in 2023 or 2024, they did win “Best Dance Performance – Male Group” and then “Best Male Group”, both repeat wins.
Since 2024, they’ve released many more songs, some of which they performed in their biggest MAMA year ever. Stray Kids performed “CREED”, “Chk Chk Boom”, and “CEREMONY” in an upbeat and interactive way, given that they had the means for a high production quality, being the group with the most accomplishments under JYP. Finally, in Hong Kong at the Kai Tak Stadium on November 28 and 29, Stray Kids won their first Daesang (Grand Prize) of “Album of the Year” for their album “KARMA”, which was released on August 22, 2025.
Even though many consider this their highest achievement, they’ve recently hit another historic milestone. With the release of their latest album, “DO IT”, they’re now the first and only artist in Billboard 200’s 70-year history to debut their first eight charting albums directly to #1 on the charts. The albums are “Oddinary” and “Maxident” from 2022, “5-Star” and “Rock-Star” from 2023, “ATE” and “HOP” from 2024, and lastly, “KARMA” and “DO IT” from 2025.
In this real-life story of rags to riches, the group serves as the perfect example of what anyone could achieve if they put their mind to it.