Katseye dazzles London despite two members on health hiatus

The O2 Arena in London erupted before Katseye even took the stage. As the band's music videos flooded the venue's screens, the crowd's roar barely subsided for the next three hours—a response that felt less like enthusiasm and more like relief, as if fans had been waiting for this moment and were determined to make it count. The girl group was performing their first full concert in the UK, and they were doing it with four members instead of six.

Manon Bannerman and Sophia Laforteza were absent, both on health-related hiatus. Manon had stepped back in February after speaking publicly about the racism and death threats the band had endured, citing the need to focus on her wellbeing. Sophia followed in the spring, announcing she needed to protect her mental health, posting on social media that "you can't pour from an empty cup." Her mother later told media outlets the absence was temporary, that the management understood when the girls needed rest. But for this London show, the stage was noticeably smaller.

Katseye had only formed three years earlier, in 2023, emerging from The Debut: Dream Academy, an online reality competition created by Hybe—the South Korean entertainment powerhouse behind BTS—and the American label Geffen. Of 120,000 initial applicants, six had made it through. Trained in the rigorous K-pop system, they'd broken through in 2025 with the single Gnarly, followed by Gabriela, a ballad that centered Daniela Avanzini's Cuban-Venezuelan heritage. By the time they reached London, they were YouTube UK's most-streamed act.

The four members who took the stage—Yoonchae Jeong, Megan Skiendiel, Lara Raj, and Avanzini—worked visibly to fill the gaps. They opened with Hootie Frutti, a bass-heavy Brazilian funk number that arrived in a storm of laser lights, and the crowd responded as if the missing members didn't matter. Jeong, the band's youngest, asked if the audience was happy to see them. The question seemed rhetorical. Skiendiel marveled that this was their loudest crowd ever. Raj called them unbelievable. The audience was predominantly young—the queue for candy was longer than the one for alcohol—and many were at their first concert ever. When Megan posed that question, the screams were almost painful.

The band honored their absent members in different ways. Sophia's pre-recorded vocals remained on songs like Mean Girls and Pinky Up, a K-pop tradition of holding space for someone temporarily gone. Manon's parts were redistributed among the remaining singers, a practical solution that reflected her hiatus predating the tour's rehearsals. There had been accusations of miming after the Dublin opening night, but in London the microphones were live, with backing tracks doubling the vocals at key moments. On slower songs like Tonight I Might, the band proved capable as live performers. Lara's solo showcase, unloveu—introduced as the first Katseye song written by a band member—mixed power and emotion in a way that suggested depth beyond their ear-candy pop signature.

The crowd was invested in ways that went beyond typical fandom. Fans shook lightsticks and mirrored dance moves. Some wore bindis, inspired by Lara's incorporation of her Asian heritage into her aesthetic. One person arrived dressed as a courgette, referencing a lyric from Internet Girl. Parents watched alongside their children with genuine enjoyment. Even Melanie C from the Spice Girls had become a fan, hosting a Q&A with the band during their first UK visit the previous October. She'd told the BBC that summer: "They're incredible girls. They've got great music, they've got a great work ethic. Obviously, they've had a little drama, as happens with all bands, but they work so goddamn hard."

The drama was real and ongoing. The grueling schedule that K-pop demands had taken its toll. Lia from the group Itzy had taken more than a year off to treat extreme anxiety. Moka from Katseye's labelmates Illit was currently on extended hiatus for the same reason. The industry had learned, or was learning, that rest wasn't weakness. Sophia's mother's comment—"This is what I love about her management. They realise when the girls are tired"—suggested a shift in how the system treated its performers, though the fact that two members needed to step back spoke to how far that shift still had to go.

The show ended with Iconic By Mistake, the band's defiant response to an online hate campaign, followed by an extended version of Gnarly complete with a leather-studded rock remix. As they waved goodbye, Jeong promised: "This is not a goodbye. We'll come back." The crowd believed her. What had seemed like a liability—a band performing at reduced capacity—had instead become proof of something harder to quantify: that Katseye had built something real enough to survive disruption, that their audience would wait, and that the work they were doing mattered enough to protect.