How to Read Korea’s MSCI Index Review Calendar

Key Takeaways

• Korea Exchange (KRX) rebalances KOSPI 200, KOSDAQ 150, and KRX 300 twice a year, in June and December. Our piece on Korea’s index construction covers that calendar in full. The two calendars layered on top of it, MSCI’s and FTSE Russell’s, decide whether a Korean stock counts toward the benchmarks most foreign funds track: the MSCI Korea Index or a FTSE Russell index. Each runs on its own schedule, with its own vocabulary.
• MSCI reviews its indexes four times a year — February, May, August, and November — and reviews Korean constituents at every one of them. Historically, February and August were called “Quarterly Index Reviews,” and May and November were “Semi-Annual Index Reviews,” and they did the heavier lifting. Since February 2023, all four use the same comprehensive methodology. MSCI’s own documentation dropped the quarterly/semi-annual labels with that switch. Financial media and sell-side research didn’t; they still call May and November “semi-annual,” out of habit more than function.
• FTSE Russell also runs four reviews a year, in four different months. Its Global Equity Index Series (GEIS) treats March and September as the comprehensive “Semi-Annual Review”—full liquidity retesting included. June and December are the narrower “Quarterly Review.” Line the two calendars up, and the word “semi-annual” points at different months depending on which index provider said it.
• A real example, dated: MSCI’s August 2026 Index Review. Announced August 12, 2026, it added LG Innotek to the MSCI Korea Index. It removed HLB, LG Display, POSCO International, and Samsung EPIS Holdings, effective as of the close of August 31, 2026. No invented case study—this is what MSCI’s own results document says.
• A stock doesn’t always wait for its scheduled date. Our piece on foreign ownership ceilings covers KT’s November 2024 removal from the MSCI Korea Index. MSCI pulled it forward two and a half weeks ahead of that quarter’s main effective date, because KT’s foreign room had already hit zero. It was the off-cycle version of the scheduled reviews described here.
• The classification debate is left out. Our piece on MSCI’s Korea classification covers why MSCI still calls Korea an emerging market while FTSE Russell classifies it as developed. The question here is only when each provider’s review clock ticks.

Contents

1. Two calendars, one borrowed word
2. MSCI’s four reviews: what changed in 2023
3. FTSE Russell’s offset calendar
4. Off-cycle: when a stock doesn’t wait for its date
5. Who trades at the close
6. A dated example: MSCI’s August 2026 Korea review
7. Calendar mix-ups
8. Frequently asked questions

1. Two calendars, one borrowed word

KRX rebalances KOSPI 200, KOSDAQ 150, and KRX 300 twice a year. The decisions are finalized in May and November. The constituent changes take effect the trading day after the last trading day of the June and December KOSPI 200 futures and options contracts—the second Thursday of each of those two months. That mechanism, including the June 2026 review that swapped four KOSPI 200 names and sixteen in KOSDAQ 150, is covered start to finish in our index-construction piece.

What happens next runs on other providers’ rulebooks. A Korean stock’s inclusion in KOSPI 200 tells you almost nothing about its status in the index a foreign pension fund or a global ETF tracks. Most of that foreign money follows MSCI or FTSE Russell benchmarks instead. Both providers run their own review calendars, independent of KRX’s and independent of each other.

The vocabulary gets confusing fast. Both MSCI and FTSE Russell review their global indexes four times a year. Both providers have used the words “quarterly” and “semi-annual” for two tiers within that cycle. FTSE Russell still does. And the two providers attach those words to different months. MSCI’s heavier reviews, at least in name, landed in May and November. FTSE Russell’s land in March and September. A reader who sees “MSCI’s semi-annual review” and “FTSE’s semi-annual review” and assumes they mean the same calendar month is wrong. As the next two sections cover, that reader is also increasingly wrong about what “semi-annual” even means for MSCI anymore.

2. MSCI’s four reviews: what changed in 2023

MSCI’s 2026 reviews run on four announcement dates: February 10, May 12, August 12, and November 11. MSCI’s own results releases date the February and May reviews. The November date comes from MSCI’s published review schedule. Each announcement is followed by an effective date about three weeks later—March 2, June 1, September 1, and December 1, respectively. The August 2026 review, confirmed directly from MSCI’s own published results document, states plainly that changes “will take place as of the close of August 31, 2026.” The announcement itself is dated August 12, 2026.

For years, those four dates weren’t equal. Before February 2023, MSCI ran what it called two “Quarterly Index Reviews,” in February and August. It ran two “comprehensive semi-annual index reviews” in May and November. The semi-annual pair did a full country- and size-segment review. The quarterly pair handled a narrower set of updates. MSCI announced on June 28, 2021 that this was changing. By its own account, the goal was to spread turnover more evenly across the year, rather than concentrate it twice yearly.

Starting with the February 2023 review, MSCI began applying that same comprehensive methodology at all four dates. It calls the result a Quarterly Comprehensive Index Review, or QCIR. By May 2023, that included the last holdout. MSCI’s Foreign Inclusion Factor—the mechanism that determines how much of a foreign-capped Korean stock counts toward index weight—is now fully reviewed at every one of the four dates. It uses data current up to each review’s own price cutoff, rather than twice a year as before. MSCI went further in its own documentation. Its October 2022 Q&A says “Semi-Annual Index Reviews” and “Quarterly Index Reviews” would simply become “Index Reviews” in its public materials. A technical notice sent to clients on September 13, 2022, described that change.

That’s the formal position. It hasn’t fully caught on. Sell-side research and financial media still call May and November “semi-annual” reviews, years after the substantive difference disappeared. One thing genuinely didn’t change, though. MSCI still reviews which country a security is assigned to—its Country of Classification—once a year, as part of the November review. The exception is a change in country of incorporation outside a corporate event. Since May 2023, MSCI can pick that up at any of the four reviews. That’s a per-security nationality check. It isn’t the country-level question of whether Korea’s whole market counts as emerging or developed, and that larger question runs on an entirely separate calendar. MSCI’s 2026 Annual Market Classification Review, published June 23, 2026, kept Korea in the emerging-market category rather than opening a reclassification consultation. It stated plainly that “the Korean won is not deliverable offshore” and that “international institutional investors will need to be convinced” that Korea’s overnight won-trading liquidity will reach developed-market standards. This site’s dedicated piece on that classification debate covers the argument in full; it isn’t retold here.

3. FTSE Russell’s offset calendar

FTSE Russell runs its own four-times-a-year cycle for the FTSE Global Equity Index Series. None of its four months match MSCI’s. And where the two calendars do share a labeling convention, the label points at different months.

FTSE Russell’s own 2026 review-schedule documentation splits the year on different months from MSCI’s historical split. March and September are the “Semi-Annual Review”—a full reconstitution, including a twelve-month liquidity retest across the entire universe. June and December are the narrower “Quarterly Review.” Those two handle industry-classification updates, capping adjustments, IPOs that missed the faster entry route on their first listing, and the sizing of newly spun-off companies. For 2026, the effective dates follow FTSE’s standard rule: the Monday after the third Friday of the review month. That puts them at March 23, June 22, September 21, and December 21, with constituent changes applied after the market close the preceding Friday in each case.

One test runs at all four of those dates, not only the two semi-annual ones. FTSE Russell’s minimum foreign headroom check is the FTSE-side counterpart to MSCI’s foreign room rules. Our piece on foreign ownership ceilings covers that mechanism for the handful of Korean stocks it binds on, in telecom, airlines, and broadcasting.

A second layer explains why FTSE Russell’s relationship with Korea reads differently from MSCI’s. FTSE Russell already classifies South Korea as a developed market. Its March 2026 interim announcement, published April 7, 2026, still lists Korea that way. FTSE’s country-level review runs on its own clock. The annual review is conducted in September, and its results come out in October. A March interim review reports in April. FTSE has scheduled the 2026 annual announcement for October 6, 2026. A notice period of at least six months applies before any reclassification takes effect. That track is separate from the quarterly GEIS constituent reviews in this section, and from MSCI’s decision to keep Korea emerging, which our MSCI classification piece compares.

4. Off-cycle: when a stock doesn’t wait for its date

Everything above describes a fixed schedule. Real markets don’t always cooperate with fixed schedules, and both MSCI and FTSE Russell build in a way to jump the queue.

The clearest documented case sits on this site already. KT Corporation’s foreign ownership had used up its statutory ceiling. MSCI announced KT’s removal from the MSCI Korea Index on November 6, 2024. It was one of seven Korean deletions in that quarter’s regular review. Most of that review’s changes took effect as of the close of November 25, 2024. KT didn’t. Foreign purchases were already blocked outright at the exchange level, so MSCI pulled KT out immediately after the close of trading on November 8, 2024—seventeen days ahead of the rest of that review’s own constituents. This site’s piece on foreign ownership ceilings walks through the full mechanics of how a foreign ceiling turns into a foreign room number and eventually an index deletion. It isn’t repeated here.

FTSE Russell’s own quarterly reviews build a related kind of flexibility directly into their June and December dates, even without an emergency. Those two “Quarterly Review” months are where FTSE processes IPOs that missed the faster “fast entry” route on first listing. They also reassess the size category of a newly spun-off company—changes a full March or September reconstitution would otherwise leave waiting six months. That’s a scheduled kind of off-cycle handling, distinct from KT’s forced, unscheduled removal. But it solves the same underlying problem. Real corporate events don’t wait for the calendar’s convenience, so both providers built a faster lane rather than forcing every change through the twice-yearly full review.

5. Who trades at the close?

None of the calendar detail above matters to a stock’s price unless something forces real money to move on the effective date. Something does. A large population of funds—index mutual funds, ETFs listed in Korea and abroad, and institutional mandates benchmarked to MSCI or FTSE Russell indexes—is built specifically to replicate those indexes as closely as possible. When a provider adds or removes a constituent effective a given date, every one of those funds is on the hook to buy or sell it. In practice, a large share of that trading clusters at or near the closing auction on the last trading day before the change takes effect. That’s the exact price the index itself will use to recalculate its own weights going forward. A fund minimizing tracking error has every reason to transact at that same moment, rather than drift away from it.

Our index-construction piece lays this mechanism out in more depth for KRX’s own rebalances. The same logic holds for any float-weighted benchmark with real assets tracking it. The difference for a Korea-focused fund manager is that the “effective date” can be as many as three dates on three calendars, depending on which index the fund tracks.

6. A dated example: MSCI’s August 2026 Korea review

MSCI’s August 2026 Index Review shows all of this in practice. MSCI announced the results on August 12, 2026. It posted the list of additions and deletions to its website shortly after 11:00 p.m. Central European Summer Time that evening. The changes took effect as of the close of trading on August 31, 2026.

For the MSCI Korea Index specifically, one name went in and four came out. LG Innotek was added. HLB, LG Display, POSCO International, and Samsung EPIS Holdings were removed. Across the wider MSCI Global Standard Indexes, that same review, Korea saw one addition against four deletions. That’s a smaller net change than Taiwan (six added, six removed) or China (thirty-three added, thirty-two removed) in the same review, and roughly in line with Japan’s one addition and two deletions.

Nothing in MSCI’s public results document explains why each individual name moved. That detail sits inside MSCI’s non-public size and liquidity calculations, so I don’t guess at company-specific reasons. What the announcement does put on the record is the mechanism described above: a fixed date for the decision, August 12, and a second fixed date, the close of August 31, for when it takes effect. Index-tracking funds had nineteen days of public notice to prepare a rebalancing trade. Per the mechanism in §5, most of them likely executed it at or near that August 31 close.

7. Calendar mix-ups

“Semi-annual” means different months at different providers. MSCI’s historically heavier reviews landed in May and November. FTSE Russell’s land in March and September. Reading one provider’s calendar and assuming it tells you anything about the other’s is a specific, checkable error.

MSCI’s February and August reviews are no longer the lighter ones. They were until February 2023. Since then, MSCI applies the same comprehensive methodology at all four reviews. That includes a full review of the Foreign Inclusion Factor at every one of them, rather than twice a year. Plenty of older material, and some current commentary, still describes February and August as the minor reviews. MSCI’s own documentation doesn’t use that distinction anymore.

Running a calendar for Korea says nothing about how a provider classifies it. FTSE Russell already classifies Korea as a developed market. MSCI’s own 2026 Annual Market Classification Review, published June 23, 2026, kept Korea emerging. That argument has its own piece.

Can a stock leave an index between scheduled dates? Yes. KT’s November 2024 removal from the MSCI Korea Index happened seventeen days ahead of that quarter’s own scheduled effective date. It was forced by foreign room hitting zero, not by the calendar. This site’s foreign ownership ceilings piece covers that case directly.

8. Frequently asked questions

How is MSCI’s review calendar for Korean stocks different from KRX’s own KOSPI 200 rebalance? KRX reviews KOSPI 200, KOSDAQ 150, and KRX 300 twice a year, in June and December, on a calendar this site’s index-construction hub covers separately. MSCI reviews the MSCI Korea Index four times a year — February, May, August, and November — using the same comprehensive methodology at every one of those dates since February 2023. The two calendars run independently. A stock’s status in one tells you nothing directly about its status in the other.

Is MSCI’s May and November review still meaningfully different from its February and August review? Not by MSCI’s own current methodology. Before February 2023, May and November were comprehensive “Semi-Annual Index Reviews,” and February and August were narrower “Quarterly Index Reviews.” Since 2023, all four use the identical comprehensive review process. MSCI said in 2022 that its public documentation would drop the two-tier terminology. The labels persist in market usage more than in substance.

Does FTSE Russell run the same calendar as MSCI? No. FTSE Russell’s Global Equity Index Series reviews four times a year too, but treats March and September as its comprehensive “Semi-Annual Review” and June and December as the narrower “Quarterly “Review”—different months from MSCI’s historical pattern. FTSE Russell also already classifies Korea as a developed market, a separate question from MSCI’s decision, reaffirmed on June 23, 2026, to keep Korea classified as emerging.

What happened to Korean stocks in MSCI’s August 2026 review? In that Index Review, announced August 12, 2026, and effective as of the close of August 31, 2026, MSCI added LG Innotek to the MSCI Korea Index. It removed HLB, LG Display, POSCO International, and Samsung EPIS Holdings.

Can a Korean stock be removed from an index outside these scheduled dates? Yes. MSCI removed KT Corporation from the MSCI Korea Index on November 8, 2024, seventeen days before the rest of that review took effect, as of the close of November 25, 2024. KT’s foreign ownership had already exhausted its statutory ceiling, and MSCI’s own foreign-room calculation had fallen below the level its methodology treats as a full exit. This site’s foreign ownership ceilings piece covers that case in detail.

Does any of this affect Korean equity futures and options access? Not directly. The review calendars covered here decide index constituents and weights, not futures margin or brokerage entry requirements. For the separate question of what it takes to trade KOSPI 200 futures and options as a foreign retail investor, see this site’s piece on that entry bar.

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Last updated: September 28, 2026

Disclaimer: This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute investment, legal, or tax advice. Index review dates, methodologies, and classification statuses described here are current as of September 28, 2026, and are subject to change by MSCI, FTSE Russell, or the Korea Exchange without notice. MSCI’s exact rationale for individual August 2026 Korea constituent changes was not disclosed in its public results document and is not speculated on here. KRX’s December 2026 regular review had not been decided as of September 28, 2026; the constituent changes for that review will not be known until KRX’s own announcement in November 2026. Confirm current index methodology and classification status directly with MSCI, FTSE Russell, the Korea Exchange, or a licensed broker before making any investment decision. Seoul Market Brief does not recommend any specific security, fund, or transaction.