BTS THE CITY ARIRANG New York opens its citywide stamp rally on Friday, July 24, 2026, in Eastern Time. A separate reservation-only ARMY MADANG program will operate at the Korean Cultural Center New York from August 1 to August 3, daily from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. ET.

The two activities do not use the same entry rule. ARMY MADANG requires a timed Weverse reservation, while the stamp rally asks participants to visit participating locations, complete missions and scan on-site QR codes.

What is confirmed

HYBE’s official Weverse notices confirm an eight-mission stamp rally running from July 24 through August 3 ET. The locations include MetLife Stadium-related checkpoints, the Korean Cultural Center New York, Grand Central Terminal, a Tous les Jours location near Madison Square Park, Arte Museum New York, Bank of Hope and Top of the Rock.

Operating dates are not identical at every location. Some missions start later than July 24, Bank of Hope is closed on weekends, and the Top of the Rock mission requires a paid admission ticket. Participants should check the official notice again on the day they travel.

How the ARMY MADANG reservation works

Reservations opened through Weverse Queues at 10 p.m. ET on July 23—11 a.m. KST on July 24—and are handled first come, first served. Each person may hold one reservation.

The venue is the Korean Cultural Center New York, 122 E 32nd Street. Each reserved session lasts 50 minutes. Guests may begin check-in 30 minutes before their slot, but arriving more than 30 minutes early can result in waiting-area restrictions. Admission may be denied after a guest is more than 20 minutes late, and re-entry is not allowed.

Staff will verify the reservation page while the participant is logged in to Weverse. Screenshots and photos of the confirmation page are not accepted, and reservations cannot be transferred to another person.

How to complete the stamp rally

Participants visit a listed location, take part in its BTS THE CITY program and scan the available QR code. Some missions require on-site GPS verification, so the Weverse app or mobile browser needs location permission.

Collecting four or more stamps unlocks a digital “NEW YORK Special Badge” in the BTS section of My Collection. Completing the WORLD TOUR ARIRANG mission can also unlock a one-month BTS Digital Membership trial, but that offer is limited to the first 10,000 eligible participants.

Rewards are not added automatically. Participants must tap the claim button on the stamp-rally page before the collection period ends.

What visitors should check before leaving

Update the Weverse app, sign in with the account attached to the reservation and keep mobile data and location services available. Grand Central Terminal and other crowded or underground locations may have unstable connections, so a low battery or delayed GPS signal can interrupt stamp collection.

For the latest hours and any capacity changes, use the official ARMY MADANG reservation notice and the official stamp-rally notice. The key distinction is simple: reserve ARMY MADANG in advance; complete the stamp rally on location.

As of this update, both programs have concluded

This guide originally tracked a stamp rally running July 24 through August 3 and ARMY MADANG sessions from August 1 to August 3, 2026. As of this August 7 update, both windows have closed. It remains published as a reference for how HYBE structures a THE CITY program in a given city — the split between a reservation-only venue experience and an open, location-based stamp rally — rather than as a currently actionable schedule. If BTS THE CITY runs an ARIRANG program in another city, or returns to New York later, expect a fresh notice with its own dates, locations and reservation window rather than a reopening of this one.

Why THE CITY programs are structured around two different mechanics

Splitting a city-wide BTS THE CITY event into a reservation-only venue component and a walk-up, GPS-verified stamp rally reflects two different capacity problems. ARMY MADANG, held in a single fixed venue with 50-minute timed sessions, needs a hard cap on simultaneous attendance, which is why it runs on advance reservation through Weverse Queues rather than a walk-in line. The stamp rally, spread across multiple public and commercial locations around the city, does not have a single bottleneck venue to protect, so it can run on open access with on-site QR verification instead. Readers attending a THE CITY program in another city should expect this same basic split — one reservation-gated flagship location plus a broader open rally — even where the specific venues and dates differ entirely from New York’s.

What GPS-based mission verification actually requires

The stamp rally’s requirement for location permission is a genuine technical dependency, not a formality: several missions verify a participant’s presence through the phone’s GPS rather than the QR code alone, which means a participant using a VPN, a spoofed location, airplane mode, or a phone with location services disabled at the system level can fail verification even while standing at the correct address. For international participants specifically, it is worth checking before travel that location services are enabled for the Weverse app itself, not just for the phone generally, since app-level permissions are commonly the setting that gets missed.

How badge and reward thresholds usually work in these programs

The four-stamp threshold for the digital “NEW YORK Special Badge” and the separate, capacity-limited Digital Membership trial illustrate a pattern common to HYBE’s stamp-rally style events: a lower, easier threshold unlocks a cosmetic or collectible reward that most participants can reasonably reach, while a higher-effort or specific-mission requirement gates a more valuable benefit and is explicitly capped to a fixed number of participants on a first-come basis. Treat any stated participant cap as a real constraint rather than a formality — reaching the mission requirement does not guarantee the reward if the cap has already been reached by other participants.

Quick questions

Can I still complete the stamp rally or visit ARMY MADANG now? No. Both programs’ confirmed windows — the stamp rally through August 3 and ARMY MADANG sessions August 1–3 — have passed as of this update.

If I collected stamps but didn’t claim the badge in time, can I still claim it? The sources cited here state that rewards require tapping the claim button before the collection period ends; nothing in those sources describes a way to claim after that period closes.

Will BTS THE CITY ARIRANG come to other cities? This guide covers only the confirmed New York program. Any other city’s program would require its own separate official Weverse notice with its own dates and locations.