AKB48 has reached #1 on Japan Billboard this week.

After 2 weeks straight, the Nogizaka46 lost the throne on the Japanese music board to Onee-san ( big sister).

This week the famous group AKB48 have reached the leader position on Japan's Billboard. This time they bring the music "Ne Mo Ha Mo Rumor" with them on their 58th Single.

Youtube : LINK

The AKB48 has 5 teams - Team A, Team K, Team B, Team 4 and Team 8. the group consists of 98 members, divided among several teams: Team A with 20 members, Team K with 20 members, Team B with 21 members, and Team 4 with 25 members, Team 8 with 42 members, the last of which have 30 members serving concurrently with other AKB48 teams.

Akihabara is the district of Tokyo where the AKB48 theatre has been located since the group debuted in 2015. A common abbreviation for "Akihabara" in Japanese is "Akiba", and taking the first letter of each syllable you get: A, K B. The names of the other groups arose in a similar fashion.

In the beginning, it had 16 members per team, 3 teams in total ( 16 plus 3 = 48), that work in rotation in the theatre, where they performed daily. By rotating, the teams had enough time to rest before the next performance. But as you can see the number 48 meaning lost its importance.

Each team had its own theme and image. Team 8 is almost a separate group, having 47 members, one from each of Japan's 47 prefectures. Each team has their own set of stage performances that they perform in the Theater, and as others have said they also typically have a different image: Team A is the traditional idol team, Team K is the fierce team, while Team B is the "kawaii" team. This is still mostly true for A and K, I don't really follow the others. Team 4 was the future-image team.

AKB48 has sisters-groups as I mentioned before, one of them is Nogizaka46. But there are many others across Asia :

SKE48: Sakae, Japan. Known for being good dancers. Sometimes called "S Gay E 48" because of the lesbian undertones in some of their songs.
NMB48: Namba, Japan. Known for being interesting on variety shows.
HKT48: Hakata, Japan. Originally the youngest group, but NGT is now the youngest.
NGT48: Niigata, Japan (new group)
Keyakizaka46: ???, Japan (new group, sister group of Nogi46)
JKT48: Jakarta, Indonesia (international group, sings in Indonesian and English). Very popular in their country, to my knowledge.
SNH48: Shanghai, China (international group, sings in Mandarin Chinese). Not very popular in their country, to my knowledge. They have a ton of sponsorships, though.