Hanni Pham
Kim Minji
Danielle Marsh
Kang Haerin
On July 1, 2019, HYBE (then-known as Big Hit) announced that Min Hee Jin would join the company as their new CBO (Chief Brand Officer), and one of her tasks is to lead a girl group project between Big Hit and Source Music. On September 4, 2019, the Plus Global Auditions were announced. Auditions were held in 16 cities and lasted until the end of October. By the end of 2019, casting had been completed and training began at the beginning of 2020. By September 2021, the girl group's management was transferred to ADOR. On November 21, 2021, HYBE officially announced the launch of a new independent label, ADOR, under the agency. The label plans to launch a new girl group in 2022 and will be mainly be produced by the label's CEO, Min Hee Jin, and primarily consist of members recruited during HYBE's Plus Global Audition in 2019. On March 3, 2022, Min Hee Jin revealed that the girl group's debut will specifically be in the third quarter of the year.
On July 1, the first teaser videos were released and it was also announced that the group would release their first content on the 22nd. On July 22, the group released the debut music video for the track "Attention" and the debut schedule for their first EP, New Jeans. Teaser photos were released that same day. The music videos for "Hype Boy" and "Hurt" were released on July 23 and July 25, respectively. On July 28, ADOR announced that as of July 27, New Jeans had surpassed 444,000 stock pre-orders, the highest number achieved by any girl group debut album in history. On August 1, the group's debut EP was released digitally, along with the music video for "Cookie." NewJeans then held their debut stage on the August 4 broadcast of Mnet's M! Countdown, performing all their three lead singles, "Attention", "Hype Boy", and "Cookie." On August 18, the group took their first-ever music show win on the August 18 broadcast of M! Countdown.