SMTR25

SMTR25 is the public trainee team at the center of SM Entertainment's next boy-group search, but the point of the project is not mystery. It is visibility. Through Mnet's Reply High School, the company pushed 15 trainees including Nicholas, Songha, and Tata into an audience-facing system where weekly content, missions, and fan response all matter before a final lineup is locked.

The 2026 release stack gave that experiment real commercial weight. We Go Up turned the project into more than trainee content, while the Reply High School Fan Meeting Tour: Graduation Trip pushed the team from screen visibility into ticketed demand across Seoul and later overseas stops. That matters because SM is testing whether public familiarity can be built earlier, faster, and more globally than in its old closed-door trainee cycles.

For HITKULTR, SMTR25 is one of the clearest looks at how a major label is rewriting rookie incubation in public. The group sits between broadcast storytelling, official music releases, and the wider SM Entertainment ecosystem. If the eventual debut team lands, this page will read like chapter one instead of preamble.