The sixth and final season of the South Korean reality television competition show K-pop Star, also branded as K-pop Star 6: The Last Chance, that premiered in SBS on November 20, 2016, until April 9, 2017. It aired every Sunday evenings as part of the Good Sunday lineup.^[1] Yang Hyun-suk, Park Jin-young, and You Hee-yeol will return as judges.^[2]

Changes to the format have been made to the final season, with restrictions lifted for potential contestants to encourage anyone to participate in "the last chance" to become a K-pop Star. Existing trainees of companies as well as singers who have already debuted are allowed to participate.^[1] The winner of the final season will not choose which company to debut with, but instead will be jointly debuted and promoted by all three companies (YG, JYP, Antenna).^[2]

Process

• Audition applications + Preliminary auditions (June - August 2016)

Judges

• Yang Hyun-suk (YG Entertainment) – Producer, singer
• Park Jin-young (JYP Entertainment) – Executive producer, producer, singer, songwriter
• You Hee-yeol (Antenna Music) – Singer, pianist

Casting Audition

Battle Audition

Contestants represent the company they were cast to in a 1 to 1 to 1 battle. First place automatically gets to be in the Top 10, while 3rd place is eliminated. Contestants who finish in 2nd place battle the other contestants who finished 2nd place. Anyone who does not get in the Top 10 teams/contestants is eliminated. For trainees, the winner team advances to Top 10 and lose team joined other contestants in 2nd place for rematch individually.

Stage Auditions

• For the Top 8 Finals, the Top 10 competed in two groups on stage with the results determined by the judges. The top three contestants from each group were chosen to proceed to the next round.
  • The Top 8, who proceeded to the live stage, were determined by the three judges as well as a 100-member Audience Judging Panel. The last two contestants from each group became Elimination Candidates, with the Audience Judging Panel voting for their preferred act. The two acts with the most votes from the four Elimination Candidates proceeded to the Top 8, with the other two contestants eliminated.

• The Top 8 competes 1:1 on the live stage with the results determined by the judges. One contestant from each group is chosen to proceed to the next round.
• The contestants not chosen will go through voting by 100 citizen judges, where the three top contestants will proceed to the next round.

• Trainee contestants is reform into two girl groups (each group contains 3 people).
• For the Top 6, Top 4 and Finals, the judges and viewers' scores were weighted 60:40, and were combined to eliminate the contestant with the lowest score.

References