The band’s first all-new record in nine years features the last recorded vocal performance by Dolly Parton
U2 are officially entering a new era. The legendary Irish rock band has announced its 16th studio album, Carnaval De Luz, which will arrive on November 13, 2026, marking U2’s first full-length collection of entirely new material in nine years. The announcement comes at a particularly significant moment in the group’s history, almost exactly 50 years after drummer Larry Mullen Jr. famously posted a handwritten notice at Mount Temple Comprehensive School in Dublin seeking musicians to form a band in September 1976. That advertisement ultimately brought together Mullen, Bono, The Edge and Adam Clayton, beginning a partnership that has endured for five decades. Now, rather than simply looking backward at their history, U2 are celebrating the milestone with a substantial amount of new music, with Carnaval De Luzserving as the centerpiece of a year in which the group says it will have released 24 new songs.
Produced by longtime collaborator Jacknife Lee, Carnaval De Luz is described as a 12-song collection built around themes of spirituality, friendship, freedom and perseverance in the face of increasingly dark forces. The album was recorded in various locations and reportedly combines some of U2’s more experimental instincts with tightly constructed songwriting, continuing ideas that began taking shape during the same creative period that produced the band’s two surprise six-song EPs released earlier in 2026, Days of Ash and Easter Lily. Those projects were conceived around the liturgical calendar, and Carnaval De Luz expands that concept: Carnival represents celebration before the restraint and reflection of Lent and the eventual rebirth associated with Easter. The Edge summarized the resulting record as “a messy, provocative, sacred collection of songs,” suggesting that U2 have embraced both the celebratory and more contemplative sides of that concept.
The album also brings U2 back together with several major collaborators from throughout the band’s career while introducing some newer creative partners. Brian Eno, whose work with U2 stretches back to The Unforgettable Fire and includes landmark albums such as The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby, contributes songwriting and synthesizers to “Go (Carnaval De Luz),” “The Greatest Show On Earth” and “Can’t Stop Us Now.” Martin Garrix receives a co-writing credit on “Glorify,” while Daniel Lanois plays pedal steel guitar on the closing song, “Torn.” Ryan Tedder, another frequent U2 collaborator, contributes additional production to “Silencio.” The album also includes “The Mirror Maker,” featuring Rosalía, giving the record another connection to the Spanish-speaking musical and cultural influences suggested by its title and several of its song names.
Perhaps the album’s most poignant collaboration comes on its closing track, “Torn,” a duet between Bono and Dolly Parton that has now become Parton’s final recorded vocal performance. The song was co-written by U2, Parton and Johnny McDaid and is described as a tender country-influenced composition dealing with fractured family relationships and their broader emotional consequences. Daniel Lanois’ pedal steel contribution further emphasizes the song’s country character. The collaboration gives Carnaval De Luz an unexpectedly emotional conclusion while connecting U2’s expansive rock sound with one of American music’s most celebrated songwriting traditions.
Arriving alongside the album announcement is “Silencio,” a compact, aggressive burst of rock and roll that provides one of the clearest early indications of the record’s sound. Running approximately two minutes and 35 seconds, U2 describe the song as an homage to the irreverence and energy of early surf-punk. Rather than reaching for the enormous atmospheric builds associated with some of the band’s biggest anthems, “Silencio” finds U2 operating in a deliberately concise and energetic mode, with the band emphasizing guitars, rhythm and immediacy. Rolling Stone described the track as a concise, raging punk song, while the album announcement points toward it as one example of U2 reconnecting with a rawer musical impulse even as the broader record explores more experimental territory.
“Silencio” is accompanied by a music video filmed in Mexico City earlier in 2026 and directed by Cliqua, the Mexican-American directing partnership of Pasqual Gutiérrez and Raúl “RJ” Sanchez. Although it arrives as the major new song accompanying the album’s formal announcement, “Silencio” is actually the second track unveiled from Carnaval De Luz. U2 previously released “Street of Dreams” in July, providing the first preview of the record. Together, the songs begin establishing the musical landscape of an album that appears designed to move between direct rock songwriting, punk energy, experimental textures and collaborations that stretch beyond U2’s traditional sonic boundaries.
Bono’s description of Carnaval De Luz reinforces the idea of the album as both celebration and resistance. In announcing the project, he promised “loud guitars, deep bass, some ecstatic rhythms” while portraying the record’s carnival imagery as a response to darkness beyond its gates. Rather than allowing those forces to overwhelm the music, Bono described U2’s response as making the drums louder, the stories more imaginative and the melodies sweeter. That philosophy appears central to Carnaval De Luz: acknowledging anxiety and uncertainty without allowing either to extinguish joy, creativity or community.
The 12-song track listing announced for Carnaval De Luz consists of “Go (Carnaval De Luz),” “La Reina,” “Street Of Dreams,” “The Mirror Maker (Rosalía),” “Superficiality,” “If The World Is At War We Better Not Be,” “Silencio,” “The Greatest Show On Earth,” “Glorify,” “Midnight Sunshine,” “Can’t Stop Us Now” and “Torn,” featuring Dolly Parton. The album will be issued in numerous configurations, including standard vinyl and CD editions, digital download, limited-edition deluxe vinyl and CD box sets, and various colored and bespoke vinyl editions.
Carnaval De Luz also represents a major return to conventional album-making for U2. While the band released Songs of Surrender in 2023, that project consisted of newly recorded and radically rearranged versions of songs from U2’s existing catalog. Their last studio album of original material was Songs of Experience in December 2017, making the November release their first complete album of new songs in nearly nine years. The timing gives Carnaval De Luz additional significance: 50 years after four teenagers came together in Dublin, Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. are marking the anniversary not simply with another retrospective, but with an ambitious new body of work intended to point forward.
With “Silencio” available now and Carnaval De Luz scheduled for November 13, U2’s 50th-anniversary year is shaping up as one centered as much on new music as the band’s enormous history. The record reconnects the group with figures such as Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois while bringing collaborators including Rosalía, Martin Garrix and Ryan Tedder into the fold, and it closes with an especially historic final performance from Dolly Parton. Five decades after Larry Mullen Jr.’s noticeboard advertisement started the story, Carnaval De Luz finds U2 still attempting to reinvent what the band can sound like—and using the idea of a “carnival of light” as its answer to a world the musicians see as increasingly shadowed by uncertainty.
U2 – Carnaval De Luz [2026]
- Go (Carnaval De Luz)
- La Reina
- Street 0f Dreams
- The Mirror Maker (Rosalía)
- Superficiality
- If the World Is at War We Better Not Be
- Silencio
- The Greatest Show on Earth
- Glorify
- Midnight Sunshine
- Can’t Stop Us Now
- Torn (feat. Dolly Parton
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