Loona (Hangul: 이달의 소녀), stylized as LOONA or LOOΠΔ is a South Korean girl group that debuted in 2018.
The group started its pre-debut project in October 2016 by revealing new members periodically and subsequently forming sub-units. In the following 18 months, the members were introduced through the release of individual solo tracks, single albums and extended plays. Individual promotional activities were held for each member and sub-unit. As of March 2018, there are three sub-units and 12 members set to debut on August 20, 2018.
In October 2016, BlockBerryCreative announced through Naver that they would be debuting a girl group through an 18-month-long pre-debut project.
From October 2016 to January 2017, the members that had been revealed were HeeJin, HyunJin, HaSeul and YeoJin, each in a different month with a single album. In March, the first sub-unit, Loona 1/3, was debuted consisting of members HeeJin, HyunJin, HaSeul and new member, ViVi. They debuted with a mini-album titled Love & Live, with their title track being of the same name. Promotions started on March 12 on SBS Inkigayo. On April 27, they released a repackage edition of Love & Live titled Love & Evil, the title track being called "Sonatine".
Between April 2017 and July 2017, members ViVi, Kim Lip, JinSoul and Choerry released single albums, continuing their monthly pattern.
In September 2017, HeeJin, HyunJin and HaSeul auditioned for JTBC's reality show MIXNINE, HeeJin and HyunJin passing the audition stage. HyunJin placed 18th and HeeJin placed 4th in the finale.
The group's second sub-unit, consisting of JinSoul, Kim Lip and Choerry, released the mini-album Mix & Match in September 2017, and began promoting on Mnet's M Countdown. The English version of "Loonatic" was released for international fans on October 23. On October 31, they released a repackage edition of Mix & Match titled Max & Match.
Between the months November 2017 and January 2018, they revealed three new members Yves, Chuu and Go Won following the same monthly pattern. In March 2018, the twelfth and final member, Olivia Hye was revealed on March 30. The final sub-unit, consisting of Yves, Chuu, Go Won and Olivia Hye debuted on May 30, with the mini-album Beauty and the Beat, and the title track featuring Canadian artist Grimes "Love4eva". Instead of having a debut stage on M Countdown or Inkigayo like many other artists, the sub-unit held their debut stage at Loona's very first concert, Line & Up on June 2nd, 2018.
On July 11 2018, after having been delayed for four days, the fandom name was revealed to be Orbit (Hangul: 오빛).
On July 18 2018, the first teaser for their debut concert "LOONAbirth" was released, confirming that their debut concert was to be held on August 19 that same year, followed a week later by a promotional image of HeeJin and Olivia Hye. 6 days later, an image featuring all of the girls was released to reveal that the lead single "favOriTe" would be released on August 7, nearly two weeks before the debut album and concert.
August 2018-present:[]
On August 1, a 28 second teaser of the single "favOriTe" was posted to loonatheworld on YouTube, with the music video following six days later. It was later revealed that their debut would be on August 20, with the music video for the debut single "Hi High" being released on the same day.
