The teams for NHK’s 76th Kōhaku Uta Gassen are announced. Let us all pretend to act surprised.

It’s that time of year y’all. The announcement of acts participating for NHK’s 76th Kōhaku Uta Gassen has dropped.

Kōhaku Uta Gassen is an annual show held at the end of every year, where a bunch of acts split across two teams battle it out for points awarded by the audience and a panel of judges, with one team declared a winner by the end. The show is long as hell, but we get a whole bunch of performances. And because the participants are acts which span generations, there’s something for everyone. Kōhaku Uta Gassen is a cool way to get put on acts you may never have heard of before. And the 76th Kōhaku Uta Gassen feels like an extension of the Music Awards Japan’s “Rydeen Reebot” in a way, with several of the acts who were a part of that being a part of this too.

The full list of participants are listed below. The number in brackets represents how many times the act has participated in total.

🟥 Red Team

• Aina the End
• Aimyon (7)
• ILLIT (2)
• Lilas Ikuta
• Sayuri Ishikawa (48)
• Hiromi Iwasaki (15)
• aespa
• Candy Tune
• Fuyumi Sakamoto (37)
• Mariko Takahashi (6)
• Chanmina
• Yoshimi Tendo (30)
• Nogizaka46 (11)
• HANA
• Perfume (17)
• Humbert Humbert
• Fruits Zipper
• Misia (10)
• Kaori Mizumori (23)
• LiSA (4)

⬜ White Team

• &TEAM
• Orange Range (3)
• King & Prince (6)
• Toshinobu Kubota (2)
• Hiromi Go (38)
• Sakanaction (2)
• Junretsu (8)
• Tube (3)
• Number_i (2)
• Leon Niihama (2)
• Vaundy (3)
• BE:FIRST (4)
• Masaharu Fukuyama (18)
• Akira Fuse (26)
• Mrs. Green Apple (3)
• Hiroshi Miyama (11)
• M!LK

The teams being split by gender is a Kōhaku Uta Gassen tradition which needs to be put to rest. It would be so much more fun and fair to mix up the teams. But it also makes team assignment far more inclusive for those who identify as non-binary. The latter doesn’t have to be the reason for getting rid of gendered teams, but it would be a cool byproduct of that.

The acts who appear at Kōhaku Uta Gassen are rarely ever a surprise. It’s usually a mix of older acts who debuted during the Showa era, have become fixtures of the event and have had long careers which are still going — such as Sayuri Ishikawa, Hiromi Go (his voice grates like fuck; he sounds like a male Ayumi Hamasaki) and Akira Fuse. Newer acts who have been popular and active throughout the year — Candy Tune, Chanmina, Fruits Zipper. And popular acts of the Heisei era who some would consider friends of the show — Perfume, Nogizaka46 and Misia.

City pop and kayōkyoku acts are sadly unrepresented this year, but this isn’t surprising. The recent spike in popularity of these acts has been driven largely by international fans. And these acts have not been super active domestically this year — which is a big part of the eligibility of being a part of Kōhaku Uta Gassen.

Because Kōhaku Uta Gassen is by invitation only, I’m always more interested in who may have turned down an invite than who accepted. Maybe NHK did invite city pop and kayōkyoku acts, but they declined. When you think about acts who were active and had big commercial success throughout 2025, you could probably guess who may have received an invite but turned it down. Names that immediately come to mind for me are Fujii Kaze and Kenshi Yonezu. There is NO way they did not receive invites.

The 76th NHK Kōhaku Uta Gassen will air on national television and radio on December 31st, 2025.