Interlude: 2026 NYE performances

[adevyish]

It’s the NYE concert season, aka time to keep Kouhaku on TV while completely ruining my Youtube recs in the name of catching all dozen or so Taiwanese NYE concerts. At one point I had 6 different streams open at once.

CW: Most of these videos have flashing lights.

Edit (2026/01/02): I’ve updated the links as some official livestreams have come down.

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Japan

76th NHK Kouhaku Uta Gassen

• Hoshino Gen / Create
  • A love letter to Super Mario filled with game chimes and level recreations, all filmed at the Nintendo Museum in Kyoto. Mario and Zelda composer Kondo Koji even makes an appearance!
• Perfume / Meguru Loop
  • Sadly the full perf is not on Youtube but seeing all of those old performances of theirs on the screen behind them T___T

Taiwan

Tainan

• 9m88 / Walking Towards Me
  • Chill-hop may seem a strange choice for an NYE party but I enjoyed her set.
• Suzuki Airi / Issho Kimi Oshi
  • Holiday season isn’t complete with a J-pop Christmas song!
  • This is actually a new song and the MV is very cute.
• Stayc / ASAP
  • Watching a full Stayc set is a bit weird because … surely you don’t need to “Stayc girls it’s going down!” every song? 😆

Taoyuan

• Apink / No No No
  • This was a really good year for Taiwanese fans of 2nd gen kpop groups!¹
  • The head-on camera is completely fogged up because it was pouring buckets in Taoyuan. You can watch the camera slowly lose fidelity over the 6-hour stream.
• Cosmos People / Brainstorming
  • My most millennial Taiwanese trait is going “actually that’s not bad” when Cosmos People comes on.

Taichung

• Crowd Lu / Muse
  • I know that Crowd Lu looks like he’s freezing his ass off but trust me the weather in Taichung was nice and balmy, and more importantly, free of rain.

Lihpao Land (Taichung)

• waa wei / Have A Nice Day
  • A mostly acoustic set during an NYE concert, even near the beginning, is wild, but I like waa wei so I’ll let it pass.
• HUR / Poisonous
  • Like many Taiwanese artists, HUR did two different NYE shows, but their Lihpao set had much better songs.

Yunlin

• Highlight / Fiction
  • A major k-pop boyband relegated to a 5-song set in the boonies rip.

Hualien

• Vera / Beauty and the Beat
  • I was making fun of other Taiwanese boybands all night for not having enough songs to do a full set, but then Vera (who do have a full album) went and did a Justin Bieber cover.
  • IDK why they’re down two members, including their songwriter, as they were a full six for a festival in September. Hopefully it’s fine?
• Czecho No Republic / Firework
  • Just a great high-energy set.

Taipei

• Kara / Mister
  • This song comes on and I’m suddenly a Kamilia.
  • It was raining heavily in Taipei but what a joy to watch Kara perform their hearts out despite the weather. Keep watching to see Kara be delighted by the bear mascot.

Taitung

• A-Mei / San Tian San Ye
  • Featuring: Kasiwa, DJ Didilong, Miss Ko, Kulilay Saya, Princess Ai, Sangpuy, ChihSiou, Mavis Fan, and A-Lin
  • Honestly just watch the entire hour-plus set. There were some technical delays causing minute 17 to minute 33 of the linked clip to be a mix of stand up and a cappella chaos. After that, banger after banger!

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1. For the younger audience, Hwasa and Kwon Eunbi were in New Taipei and Kaohsiung respectively.