Who Is PENTAGON? A Friendly Guide to Their 10th Anniversary Comeback

PENTAGON has been around for a decade, but the version of the group meeting fans on September 11, 2026, is not quite the one you might remember from a few years ago. The comeback single, "Coward" (겁쟁이), marks the group's 10th anniversary, and depending on how closely you have followed them, both the lineup and the people running things behind the scenes may have changed more than you expect.

PENTAGON debuted on October 10, 2016, through Mnet's survival show "Pentagon Maker," where the members were narrowed down in front of a live audience instead of being announced all at once by the company. That detail matters a little for understanding the group's early identity: fans who watched the show already knew each member's strengths and personality before the official debut, which is part of why PENTAGON built a close relationship with its fandom, known as Universe, early on.

The original ten-member lineup did not stay intact for long. E'Dawn left the group and the agency in November 2018, and PENTAGON has promoted as a nine-member act since. If you are catching up on the group now, that is worth knowing before anything else, since older PENTAGON content will still show a member who is no longer part of the group.

What tends to stand out about PENTAGON, more than any single era or release, is how much of their own music several members write and produce themselves. Hui and Yeo One in particular have writing and producing credits across the group's discography, which is not the norm for every K-pop act and is part of why longtime fans talk about PENTAGON as a group that shapes its own sound rather than only performing it.

For the 10th anniversary comeback, PENTAGON is promoting as a seven-member group: Jinho, Hui, Hongseok, Shinwon, Yeo One, Kino, and Wooseok. Yanan and Yuto are not part of this particular activity. Coverage around the announcement has used the word "departure" for both of them, but it has not been made fully clear yet whether that means a permanent exit from the group or simply that they are sitting out this comeback and tour — so it is worth treating that detail as unsettled for now rather than final.

One detail that can be confusing if you look at PENTAGON's official accounts right now: the social media handles across X, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok still read "CUBE_PTG," tying the group to Cube Entertainment, the agency that has managed PENTAGON since debut. But several outlets have reported that this 10th anniversary comeback is actually being led by NAKED, a new one-person agency founded by member Kino. In Korea, it is not unusual for an idol to set up their own label once they have enough experience and creative control, but that step usually comes with a clean break from the original company. Here, the handles have not caught up with that shift, so PENTAGON's exact company situation right now sits somewhere between the two, and it is not something HAEMIL can state with full confidence yet. If you notice both names attached to the group, that mismatch is the reason why.

The new single, "Coward," is set for release on September 11, 2026, at 6 PM KST. Reports describe the comeback as arriving alongside PENTAGON's first tour in three years. Since the single had not come out yet at the time of this guide, we could not check the official music video — we will add it here once it is live on the group's channel.

HAEMIL does not have individual profile pages for PENTAGON's members yet, so this page is the starting point for now. We plan to add more as the comeback and tour continue, including a clearer read on the group's company situation once official sources catch up, and the music video once it is out.

What makes this comeback worth a look is not really the 10-year milestone by itself. It is that PENTAGON is returning under conditions that look meaningfully different from where fans last saw them: a smaller lineup, a member-led label sitting alongside the one they came up in, and a decade of mostly self-written material behind them.