SEVENTEEN’s Seungkwan Joins New Season of The Great Escape

SEVENTEEN’s Seungkwan is set to take on a new kind of stage: the elaborate, clue-filled world of The Great Escape. The adventure variety program will return with a new season in the second half of 2026, bringing the singer into a familiar franchise that is entering its next phase.

The format places its cast inside large-scale themed scenarios and asks them to work through hidden clues, riddles and escape-room-style missions. Its challenges have often depended as much on communication and quick improvisation as on individual deduction, making the chemistry between participants a central part of the viewing experience.

A Long-Running Adventure Format Returns

The Great Escape first premiered on tvN in 2018 and completed four seasons through 2021. Across those seasons, it became known for cinematic sets and multi-layered missions that turned a studio-variety premise into an ongoing adventure. The franchise continued last year through the TVING original The Great Escape: The Story, which expanded the scale of its storytelling.

The newly announced season keeps several familiar faces in the mix. Kim Jong Min, Kim Dong Hyun, SUPER JUNIOR’s Shindong, Yoo Byung Jae and actor Ko Kyung Pyo are confirmed to appear alongside Seungkwan. The lineup combines performers with varied experience in comedy, physical competition, observation and unscripted entertainment, leaving room for both individual approaches and group strategy.

Seungkwan Adds a New Dynamic

For Seungkwan, the casting extends a television profile built through music, talk shows and variety appearances. He is known for energetic reactions and an ability to keep conversations moving, qualities that could prove useful when a group has to process a complicated mission under time pressure. The new season will show how that instinct fits within a format where every detail may matter.

His arrival also gives the series a fresh point of entry for viewers who know him primarily through SEVENTEEN. Rather than changing the premise, the casting adds another personality to a show designed around changing alliances, unexpected discoveries and the small moments of humor that emerge when a solution is just out of reach.

A Passing of the Baton

Original cast member Kang Ho Dong will not take part in the new season. In a message shared with the announcement, he looked back on the enjoyment he found in the program and encouraged the remaining members and newer participants to carry the series forward. His farewell advice was fittingly simple: wherever the cast finds itself, there is always a clue.

That change gives the return a sense of continuity as well as renewal. The program retains a core group of experienced participants while opening space for a new member to establish his own role. For an adventure show that thrives on uncertainty, the revised ensemble becomes part of the season’s first mystery.

TVING plans to premiere the new season in the latter half of 2026. A specific release date and details about its first missions have not yet been announced, but the confirmation signals that one of Korea’s best-known puzzle-driven variety formats is preparing another run—this time with Seungkwan joining the search for the next exit.