Jackson Wang
- Name
- Jackson Wang
- Born
- 28 March 1994
Fenced for Hong Kong as a teenager and switched to music at 17; in 2026 fencing's world federation made him its first global ambassador.
Their story
From sabre to stage
Jackson Wang grew up in Hong Kong as the son of an Olympic fencer and was the best under-17 sabre fencer in Asia by 2010. He gave up the sport at 17 for a K-pop audition and debuted with GOT7 under JYP. While the group was still busy in Korea, he set up his own label in China, Team Wang, and released "Papillon" in the summer of 2017, a hip-hop track about the freedom of running his own studio.
Going it alone
His first album, Mirrors, reached the Billboard 200. The real turn came in January 2021, when all seven GOT7 members left JYP. Jackson moved his solo work fully to Team Wang and released a run of singles, among them "LMLY", a disco-pop song whose video he directed himself. A year later he played Coachella as the first Chinese solo artist on the bill, and Magic Man gave him a new character to sing through.
Masks and alter egos
He sings mostly in English, with Chinese songs in between, and his albums tend to come with a story. He has said he made Magic Man as a mask to understand his own pain. Magic Man 2 brought that alter ego back with a darker side, in four chapters, from manic highs to acceptance, that move like a process of grief. "High Alone", the first single of that era, arrived with a dark, slow-burning video.
Where he is now
Magic Man 2 became the highest-charting album by a Chinese artist in Billboard history, and its world tour took him from Bangkok to the Kia Forum and Barclays Center. In the summer of 2026 fencing called him back: the sport's world federation named him its first global ambassador during the world championships in Hong Kong. In September he signed a management deal with Roc Nation and thanked his fans with the single "Thank You", whose video tells his life story with fans from around the world.
