Irene (Red Velvet) | Grazia

We’re rapidly narrowing down the playing field as we reach the Elite 8, and this year continues to be a year of upsets. The competition was incredibly close in the last round, with very few landslide victories and quite a few surprises.

This round will determine who gets top honours in each category. The current selection has proven they have the chops, but how will our contestants fare when we remove gender from the equation?

The SM Entertainment supremacy has been defeated and the competition has spread enough to include some of the smaller companies representatives.

SM idols took up quite a few of the vocal spots but only Exo’s Baekhyun survived as IU booted Taeyeon in the female vocal battle. Irene(Red Velvet) and Ten (NCT) are the last SM reps in the visual and dance categories respectively.

One of the closest matches we’ve seen was between Sunmi and Chungha in the female dance category, with the difference not even amounting to a full percentage point. A single vote determined the “Heroine” of 2018 moved forward. (G)I-dle‘s Soyeon continued to dominate in the rap category and the brooding Bang Yongguk pulled off a decisive victory against BTS‘ RM.

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Cast your vote to determine who moves on and who goes home in Seoulbeats’ March Madness 2019. The polls will close on Wednesday, March 27 at 11:59 PM EST.

Check out previous rounds of March Madness 2019 here.

(Images via SM Entertainment)