Toronto has renamed a street after a musician exactly twice in its history. The first time was Taylor Swift. The second time, this week, was BTS — and the vote to do it was more lopsided than hers.
Starting August 21, a stretch of Yonge Street between North York Boulevard and Finch Avenue is officially BTS Boulevard, marked by 20 temporary black-and-red signs timed to BTS’s two sold-out shows at Rogers Stadium this weekend as part of their Arirang World Tour. If you’re not from Toronto and are wondering why a Canadian city government is putting up K-pop street signs, or how that compares to what Swifties got, here’s the actual breakdown.
The Vote: Unanimous Beats Taylor Swift’s 21-1
In November 2024, Toronto City Council voted 21-1 to rename a route between Nathan Phillips Square and the Rogers Centre “Taylor Swift Way” for her Eras Tour stop — the city’s first-ever honorary street renaming for a musician. That lone dissenting vote came from a councillor who called it a waste of the city’s attention.
BTS Boulevard didn’t get a single “no.” The motion, introduced in late July by Councillors Lily Cheng and James Pasternak under the genuinely great title “Toronto Goes Dynamite! Welcoming BTS to BTS Boulevard,” needed a simple majority of the 25 council members plus the mayor. It cleared without opposition. For context, that’s a cleaner result than the artist who’s currently the biggest pop star on the planet managed less than two years earlier — which says something about how unremarkable a K-pop street tribute has become to Toronto’s own government.
The Signs: 20 vs. 22, and Somebody Had to Get HYBE’s Sign-Off at 5 a.m.
Taylor Swift Way had 22 signs, later auctioned off with Rogers matching donations up to $113,000 for the Daily Bread Food Bank. BTS Boulevard has 20, and this time the design wasn’t purely the city’s call. HYBE’s branding team required the signs match the Arirang tour’s black-and-red look instead of BTS’s signature purple, which meant city staff had to get sign-off from Korea across a 12-hour time difference — including one staffer taking a 5 a.m. call to hit the August 6 fabrication deadline. Final design was locked August 10, installation went up August 21, and the signs come down September 23.
The whole installation cost roughly $10,000, covered by Toronto real estate developer Sunray Group and arranged through the Korean Festival, not city tax dollars — which was the exact complaint lobbed at the Taylor Swift version.
How It Actually Happened: ARMY Did the Lobbying
This wasn’t City Hall waking up one day with K-pop opinions. Councillor Cheng has said directly that her office worked to “mobilize some of the ARMY” — local BTS fans, including North York residents, sent letters of support, and a wider social campaign tagged BTS’s management to build momentum. One fan’s submitted letter read, in full self-aware charm: “I’m a 60-something-year-old BTS fan and I support this.” That’s the kind of unglamorous, granular organizing — petitions, letters to councillors, emails to a company’s PR team — that actually moves a city government, and it’s the same playbook fandoms have used for years to get billboards in Times Square or trend a hashtag. It just doesn’t usually end in an actual street sign.
Why This Actually Matters
The real story isn’t the signs — it’s what they’re proof of. BTS is currently mid-way through an 82-show, 34-city Arirang World Tour, and its North American and European legs sold out completely, with tickets gone within hours and extra dates added in Tampa, Stanford, and Las Vegas just to meet demand. A group that’s been through two members’ military enlistments, years of hiatus speculation, and a solo-era stretch where critics kept asking if they’d stay relevant is instead touring at a scale that forces cities to rearrange their actual civic infrastructure around it. Taylor Swift getting a Toronto street was framed, at the time, as a one-off mega-star exception. BTS getting one two years later, by a wider margin, means it wasn’t an exception. It’s a category, and K-pop is in it.
Quick FAQ
Is it permanent? No — honorary co-namings like this don’t replace Yonge Street’s real name or address system; the signs go up alongside the standard ones and come down September 23.
Why red and black instead of BTS’s usual purple? Because the signs are tied to the Arirang album era specifically, and HYBE’s branding for this tour cycle is black and red.
Did taxpayers pay for it? No — a private developer covered the roughly $10,000 cost.
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Sources
- This is what BTS Blvd. looks like in Toronto — The Korea Herald
- City of Toronto celebrates K-pop band with honorary BTS Boulevard and BTS Weekend proclamation — City of Toronto
- EXCLUSIVE: How BTS ARMY helped Toronto get approval for 20 ‘BTS Boulevard’ street signs — NOW Toronto
- City of Toronto set to unveil BTS Boulevard on section of Yonge Street — CP24
- City of Toronto and Rogers unveil honorary “Taylor Swift Way” route — Rogers
- BTS Sells Out Of North American And European Leg Of ARIRANG World Tour — Forbes