K/DA, the virtual pop group Riot Games built from four League of Legends champions, is back with FIRESTARTER, a four-track EP and its first new music in six years.

According to Martin Cid Magazine, the comeback keeps the K-pop core that made the project work, with Miyeon and Soyeon of (G)I-DLE returning as Ahri and Akali, while Canadian singer Sophie Powers takes over Evelynn and English pop singer Mimi Webb voices Kai'Sa.

The lead single arrived on October 18 and the full EP followed on October 21, released digitally worldwide by Riot Games and Virgin Music Group, with physical editions planned for later.

The EP is short — the four songs run just over 13 minutes — and closes with "GIRLS," which features DJ Sona, a champion recast as an electronic musician returning to the game's music for the first time in more than a decade. It is K/DA's second EP after All Out, released in November 2020.

The casting change is the biggest shift in the group's history. Martin Cid Magazine reports that Madison Beer and Jaira Burns, who sang Evelynn and Kai'Sa on earlier releases, have been replaced by artists from very different corners of pop.

Webb is an established UK chart act whose debut EP Seven Shades of Heartbreak reached the top 10 of the albums chart, while Powers works at the edge of pop-punk and hyperpop with two EPs of her own.

Keeping Miyeon and Soyeon, the outlet notes, preserves the familiar sound long-time listeners check for first.

GIZGUIDE adds that the visual identity has flipped too: the FIRESTARTER "Fire It Up" skin collection abandons the classic neon-and-purple aesthetic for a cyberpunk red, orange and black flame motif, with all four champions — including a Legendary Evelynn and a Mythic-variant Akali with a glowing red skateboard — receiving skins inspired by Fortiche's animated style.

The title track arrives with an animated video by Fortiche, the French studio behind Arcane, which also made the clip for "POP/STARS" — the song that first introduced K/DA.

Going back to the same studio is, as Martin Cid Magazine frames it, a bet on continuity even as the look changes: Fortiche has said it wanted the return to feel more mature and more fashion-led, a step on from the characters fans have been drawing, cosplaying and playing as in-game skins since the group debuted.

The performance-first treatment clearly landed with audiences: the same outlet reports the "FIRESTARTER" video drew 9.2 million views worldwide in its first 24 hours and has since passed 36 million on the official League of Legends YouTube channel, while last.fm has already logged more than 1.4 million plays from roughly 47,800 listeners for the EP.

K/DA's model remains unusual in the industry, and the numbers explain why Riot revived it.

Martin Cid Magazine reports that Riot puts the catalogue at more than 2.7 billion streams and 1.8 billion video views, and that "POP/STARS" was certified platinum by the RIAA — making K/DA and (G)I-DLE the first K-pop girl groups to reach that mark.

The group reached listeners through gaming, K-pop, animation and online fandom at once, a multi-door strategy few virtual acts have matched.

Next comes the stage: K/DA is scheduled to perform at the Worlds 2026 Opening Ceremony at Barclays Center in New York on November 14, alongside True Damage, Riot's virtual hip-hop group, which sings this year's anthem "Know My Name."