Three findings
One building hosts 11% of the market. 48 of the 432 tracked pop-ups ran inside The Hyundai Seoul in Yeouido, the single densest pop-up venue in the country.
The district race is three-way. Gangnam (81) leads on count, Yeouido (69) is department-store driven, and Seongsu (62) is the street-level scene where brands build standalone spaces.
Fashion is the biggest category, but character IP travels best. Fashion takes 25% of openings, while character pop-ups score highest with foreign visitors (88.7 of 100 on our foreigner-relevance score).
Openings by month, 2026
June peaked at 162 new pop-ups. July is counted through 07-17 (marked *). 22 long-running exhibitions that opened before 2026 are excluded from this chart but included elsewhere.
View as table
| Month | Openings |
|---|---|
| Jan | 8 |
| Feb | 3 |
| Mar | 17 |
| Apr | 49 |
| May | 106 |
| Jun | 162 |
| Jul | 65 |
Where pop-ups happen
Seongsu highlighted: it is the only top district where the count is carried by standalone street venues rather than a department store.
View as table
| District | Pop-ups |
|---|---|
| Gangnam | 81 |
| Yeouido | 69 |
| Seongsu | 62 |
| Jamsil | 50 |
| Myeongdong & Jung-gu | 38 |
| Hongdae | 33 |
| Elsewhere in Seoul | 99 |
What kind of pop-ups
View as table
| Category | Pop-ups |
|---|---|
| Fashion | 106 |
| Character IP | 70 |
| Food & drink | 61 |
| Art & exhibition | 54 |
| Lifestyle | 46 |
| Experience | 30 |
| Beauty | 27 |
| K-pop | 25 |
| Other | 7 |
| Tech | 6 |
How long they run
The median run is 21 days. The over-90-day tail is mostly ticketed exhibitions rather than retail pop-ups.
View as table
| Run length | Pop-ups |
|---|---|
| 1 week or less | 68 |
| 8 to 30 days | 195 |
| 31 to 90 days | 85 |
| Over 90 days | 84 |
What travels with foreign visitors
Average DealSeoul foreigner-relevance score (0-100) per category: language barrier, IP recognition, payment and location friction, scored per pop-up at publication. Character IP highlighted: globally recognizable franchises need no translation.
View as table
| Category | Avg score |
|---|---|
| K-pop | 92.8 |
| Character IP | 88.7 |
| Fashion | 77.8 |
| Experience | 75.6 |
| Beauty | 74.9 |
| Food & drink | 73.9 |
| Art & exhibition | 70.4 |
| Lifestyle | 68.7 |
The repeat players
Brands and IPs that ran more than one Seoul pop-up in the window.
Methodology, honestly
What this is: every pop-up tracked by DealSeoul's editorial pipeline (venue announcements, department-store schedules, brand channels, on-the-ground checks) that was live or opened between May 1 and 2026-07-17, 2026. Each entry carries verified dates, a street address, a category and a foreigner-relevance score, with a last-verified stamp.
What this is not: a census. Coverage skews toward major venues and pop-ups relevant to foreign visitors; a neighborhood cafe collab we never saw is not in here. Counts are floors, not totals. The foreigner-relevance score is our own editorial metric, published per entry on dealseoul.com/popups.
Reuse: the underlying dataset is served live at dealseoul.com/data/popups.json. Cite the report and link back.