YoungbinLeader
김영빈- Name
- Kim Young-bin
- Born
- 23 November 1993
Opened the October 2026 anniversary concerts with a unit stage alongside Chani.
Their story
Dancers from a band label
SF9 come from FNC Entertainment, a label better known for bands. In 2016 the survival show d.o.b: Dance or Band split FNC trainees into a dance team and a band. The dancers became SF9, the company's first dance boy group. The name stands for Sensational Feeling, plus the nine members at debut. Their first single album, Feeling Sensation, came out that October with the title track "Fanfare".
Nine knights and a lost sun
"O Sole Mio" became one of their best-known songs. It was Latin pop built on a guitar melody, rare in K-pop at the time, and it told the story of nine knights searching for a lost sun. Zuho and Youngbin wrote its rap parts. The changes kept coming after that, from "Good Guy" and "Summer Breeze" to "Tear Drop" and "Trauma". Hwiyoung has compared the group to Ditto from Pokemon, a team that keeps taking on new styles.
A trophy after three years
Recognition came slowly. In 2018 they won the Rising Star Award at the Asia Artist Awards, but the first music show trophy took more than three years. It finally arrived with "Good Guy", the lead single of their first full album First Collection. The song won on M Countdown, and a win on Music Bank followed the next day. Dawon still calls that moment the highlight of their first decade.
Where they are now
SF9 continue as eight members after Rowoon left in 2023 to focus on acting. Zuho and Yoo Taeyang are doing their military service, so six members promote for now. In August 2026 they released TENACITY, their second full album and the first in about six and a half years, with "Without Wings" as the title track. Youngbin, Hwiyoung and Chani co-wrote many of its songs. The title joins perseverance with the TEN of their anniversary, which they celebrated with two concerts at KBS Arena in Seoul.