Best New K-Dramas September 2026: The Scandal, Made in Korea 2 & Every Netflix + Disney+ Premiere

Son Ye-jin, star of The Scandal, one of September 2026's biggest new K-dramas

📷 Son Ye-jin (The Scandal) · © 티비텐 TV10, via Wikimedia Commons — CC BY-SA 4.0

August gave us Song Kang at a piano and a Ryu Jun-yeol thriller. September goes bigger. We're talking Hyun Bin and Jung Woo-sung back for round two, Son Ye-jin in a Joseon romance Korea has been whispering about for a year, and Hwang Jung-min blowing things up on Netflix again.

Here's every new K-drama landing in September 2026 across Netflix, Disney+ and Prime Video — premiere dates, casts, and the one thing I'd tell a Korean friend about each. Bookmark it; I'll update as trailers and exact dates drop.

September 2026 K-Drama Calendar (At a Glance)

Title	Premiere	Platform	Genre
Made in Korea 2	Sept 9	Disney+ / Hulu	Period political thriller
Another Love, Not You	Sept 12	Prime Video	Melodrama
The Scandal	Sept 18	Netflix	Joseon romance
Mission: Cross 2	September (TBC)	Netflix (film)	Action-comedy
Four Hands, Two Sonatas	Aug 29 → ongoing	Netflix	Music romance

Made in Korea 2 — Hyun Bin vs Jung Woo-sung, Round Two (Disney+, Sept 9)

The one everyone's circling. Season 1 dropped on Christmas 2025 and immediately went No.1 on Korean streaming, powered by the sight of two of the country's biggest movie stars — Hyun Bin and Jung Woo-sung — sharing a frame. Director Woo Min-ho (Inside Men, The Man Standing Next, Harbin) makes his TV debut here, and the budget shows: a reported ₩70 billion.

Set in 1970s Korea, it follows Baek Ki-tae (Hyun Bin), a coldly ambitious KCIA operative turning the nation itself into a profit machine, and Jang Geon-young (Jung Woo-sung), the prosecutor determined to stop him. Season 2 opens with Ki-tae near the peak of his power — and Geon-young preparing his counterattack. Six episodes, cinematic scale.

🇰🇷 The Korean angle: The 1970s KCIA (중앙정보부) backdrop isn't set dressing — it's the same authoritarian era Woo Min-ho mined in The Man Standing Next. Korean viewers don't watch this as fantasy; they watch it as textbook history with the lights turned down, which is exactly why the 고증 (period accuracy) gets dissected frame by frame on communities like theqoo.

The Scandal — Son Ye-jin's Joseon Liaisons (Netflix, Sept 18)

Son Ye-jin and Ji Chang-wook lead this eight-episode late-Joseon romance, with Nana, Chani and Han Sun-hwa alongside and Jung Ji-woo directing. It's a series remake of the 2003 film Untold Scandal — itself a Korean transplant of the French novel Dangerous Liaisons. Madam Jo and the scholar-seducer Jo Won play cruel, high-stakes games of seduction while hiding what they actually feel.

🇰🇷 The Korean angle: The 2003 film's full title was 스캔들 – 조선남녀상열지사. That subtitle, 남녀상열지사, is a loaded phrase: Joseon Confucian scholars used it to sneer at older Goryeo love songs as "vulgar tunes of men and women delighting in each other." Naming a story about aristocratic sexual scheming after the exact words once used to censor desire? That's the whole drama in four syllables. Full breakdown in our The Scandal Explained.

Mission: Cross 2 — Hwang Jung-min's Househusband Is Back (Netflix Film, September)

A Netflix movie rather than a series, and a sequel to the 2024 action-comedy hit. Hwang Jung-min returns as Gang Mu, the retired special-ops agent living a quiet househusband life, and Yeom Jung-ah as Mi Seon, his detective wife. This time the president calls Gang Mu out of retirement to recover a stolen national treasure, dragging the couple into their most dangerous mission yet. No confirmed date yet, but a Q3 slot points to September.

🇰🇷 The Korean angle: The joke that made the first film land at home is the role-reversal — the lethal agent does the dishes while his wife carries the badge. It pokes at a very Korean tension over who "should" do what at home, and the sequel leans in harder.

Another Love, Not You — The 10-Year Slump (Prime Video, Sept 12)

Seo Kang-joon and Ahn Eun-jin headline this KBS2 melodrama (streaming on Prime Video) about a couple ten years deep whose once-burning love has gone cold, caught between finally marrying and quietly breaking up. Fourteen episodes of the ache you feel when you love someone and still don't know if you should stay.

🇰🇷 The Korean angle: Its entire engine is 권태기 — the "boredom period" a long Korean relationship is culturally expected to hit. There's no clean English word for it, and that untranslatable feeling is exactly what this drama is built to sell.

Four Hands, Two Sonatas — Still Playing (Netflix, Ongoing)

Technically an August premiere, but Song Kang's comeback runs weekly right through September, so it belongs on your calendar. He plays a piano prodigy whose flawless path cracks when he meets a gifted rival who once walked away from his own talent. With Lee Jun-young, Jang Gyu-ri and Kim Joo-heon.

🇰🇷 The Korean angle: The pressure-cooker world of 콩쿠르 (competitions) and 예고 (arts high schools) is its own Korean subculture — a childhood measured in rankings. Full context in our Four Hands, Two Sonatas Explained.

Also worth a look: a TVING/tvN office comedy (Sept 10 / Sept 14) about a worker who wins a 1.3-billion-won lottery and — plot twist — goes right back to his desk, now with a completely different attitude toward the job.

🇰🇷 The Bigger Korean Picture

Notice a pattern? September 2026 is heavy on period pieces — Made in Korea 2 in the 1970s, The Scandal in Joseon. That means Korean drama Twitter and theqoo spend the month doing what they love most: arguing over 고증. Wrong hairpin, anachronistic phrasing, a collar that didn't exist yet — nothing gets past them. It's a level of scrutiny English-only reviews rarely capture, and it's half the fun of watching these live from Korea.

The other headline is star wattage. A Hyun Bin–Jung Woo-sung reunion and a Son Ye-jin sageuk in the same month is the kind of lineup that gets described locally as 역대급 — "best-ever tier." Whether the dramas live up to it is September's whole question.

Where to Watch (and the Catch)

Netflix titles (The Scandal, Mission: Cross 2, Four Hands, Two Sonatas) drop worldwide on release day. Made in Korea 2 streams on Disney+ internationally and on Hulu in the US. Another Love, Not You airs on KBS2 in Korea with Prime Video handling streaming. As always, exact regional availability can shift, so double-check your platform on premiere day.

FAQ

What's the biggest new K-drama in September 2026?
It's a two-horse race: Made in Korea 2 (for star power and prestige) and The Scandal (for buzz and that Son Ye-jin–Ji Chang-wook pairing). Pick your genre.

Where can I watch Made in Korea Season 2?
Disney+ in most of the world, Hulu in the United States. Season 1 lives on the same platform if you need to catch up first.

Is The Scandal related to the 2003 film?
Yes — it's a series-length remake of Untold Scandal (2003), which itself reworked Dangerous Liaisons into Joseon Korea.

📌 Key Details
• Made in Korea 2 — Disney+/Hulu · Sept 9 · Hyun Bin, Jung Woo-sung
• Another Love, Not You — Prime Video · Sept 12 · Seo Kang-joon, Ahn Eun-jin
• The Scandal — Netflix · Sept 18 · Son Ye-jin, Ji Chang-wook
• Mission: Cross 2 — Netflix film · September (TBC) · Hwang Jung-min, Yeom Jung-ah
• Four Hands, Two Sonatas — Netflix · ongoing · Song Kang

💬 Jamie's Take

If I only had one September night, I'm giving it to Made in Korea 2 — Season 1 earned the hype, and Woo Min-ho doesn't do small. But The Scandal is the one I'm nervous about in the best way; sexy, cruel Joseon romances live or die on chemistry, and if Son Ye-jin and Ji Chang-wook click, it's over for the rest of us. Either way, September's the strongest K-drama month I've written up all year. See you on premiere night.

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