NewJeans will sing the anthem for this year's League of Legends Worlds Championship, the girl group's agency ADOR and the game's developer Riot Games said Tuesday.

Titled "Gods," the new anthem for the upcoming League of Legends Worlds Championship will be released on Oct. 4, six days before the championship kicks off on Oct. 10.

This makes NewJeans the first K-pop group to sing an anthem for Worlds. Throughout the years, Worlds had many renowned singers singing its anthems, from the American pop rock band Imagine Dragons singing "Warriors" in 2014, American rapper and singer Lil Nas X singing "Star Walkin'" in 2022 and more.


Soyeon and Miyeon of girl group (G)I-DLE sang "Pop/Stars" (2018) alongside American singers Madison Beer and Jaira Burns. "Pop/Stars" is a song released by K/DA, League's in-game fictional universe's girl group, sung by real-life artists.

"It was a very unique experience collaborating with Riot Games," NewJeans said in a press release on Tuesday. "It was fun to try out new genres and new music, and we are glad to release a song through this collaboration, that shows both NewJeans and League of Legends' unique colors."

This year's League of Legends World Championship will be held in Seoul and Busan from Oct. 10 to Nov. 19, making it the first Worlds held in Korea in five years. The finals will be held at the Gocheok Sky Dome in western Seoul.

NewJeans has been one of the biggest names in K-pop since its debut last year. Its hits "Ditto" (2022), "OMG" and "Hype boy" (2022) were the three most-streamed and downloaded songs in the first half of 2023, and the band's debut track "Attention" (2022) was the seventh most-streamed and downloaded song in Korea.

The band topped the Billboard 200 albums chart for the first time with its latest and second EP "Get Up" and saw its lead tracks "ETA," "Cool With You" and "Super Shy" top music charts in and outside of Korea for weeks.

To find out more about NewJeans, visit Celeb Confirmed!

BY CHO YONG-JUN [cho.yongjun1@joongang.co.kr]