Stray Kids’ Karma debuts at No. 1 on the U.K. iTunes Top Albums chart, beating new releases by Wolf Alice, Deftones, and Ava Max. NEW YORK, NEW YORK – MAY 06: (L-R) Bang Chan, Han, Felix, Seungmin, Hyunjin, I.N, Lee Know, and Changbin of Stray Kids attend The 2024 Met Gala Celebrating “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/MG24/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue)
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For K-pop superheroes Stray Kids, 2025 has been an especially fruitful year. The group has delivered three projects, the latest of which, Karma, arrives today (Friday, August 22). The K-pop boy band rockets to the top spot on iTunes as fans all around the world — and especially in the United Kingdom — rush to purchase the new studio effort from one of the most successful all-male vocal groups of the past several years.
Stray Kids Hit No. 1 with Karma
On the U.K.’s iTunes Top Albums chart, Karma leads the charge. Stray Kids easily conquers the list of the top-selling full-lengths and EPs on the most important digital platform in the country this Friday, which begins a new tracking week in the global music industry.
Stray Kids Beat Wolf Alice, Ava Max and Deftones
Half a dozen titles launch inside the top 10 on the iTunes Top Albums ranking in the U.K. Coming in behind Karma are albums by Wolf Alice (The Clearing, No. 2), Deftones (Private Music, No. 3), Ava Max (Don’t Click Play, No. 5), Ghostface Killah (Supreme Clientele 2, No. 7), and Pendulum (Inertia, No. 8).
Karma Follows Mixtape: Dominate and Hollow
Stray Kids first returned in 2025 with Mixtape: Dominate, the single album that arrived in March and featured just five tunes. In June, the outfit released Hollow, a Japanese-language EP that performed fairly well, hitting No. 1 in that country, but which otherwise did not rank as one of the group’s most successful projects. Karma may bring Stray Kids back to the charts in countries like the U.K. and America for the first time in 2025 with a new release.
Three Versions of “Ceremony” Chart on iTunes
Karma is fronted by lead single “Ceremony,” which is the focus for buyers in the U.K. Three different versions of “Ceremony” appear on the U.K.’s iTunes Top Songs chart, with one sitting as high as No. 27, while an English version and what’s called a “Festival Version”—essentially a remix—appear at Nos. 43 and 54, respectively, as of the time of writing.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2025/08/22/stray-kids-shoot-to-no-1-with-a-new-album/
