The hit album marked Sammy Hagar’s debut in 1986
Van Halen have announced a special reissue of their iconic 1986 album 5150. The record introduced Sammy Hagar as the band’s new singer, and ushered in a new era for the band sonically. On March 27, the band and Rhino Records are releasing an expanded 40th anniversary edition. It includes the remastered original album, rare B-sides, a previously unreleased live set from New Haven ’86, and a deluxe 24-page book. It will be available on 2-LP vinyl, and 2-CD, as we as a digital download.
Check out all the versions below, plus the tracklisting and a link to pre-order.
Celebrating its 40th anniversary in March 2026, 5150 is the first of four albums recorded by Van Halen with lead singer Sammy Hagar. To mark the occasion, an expanded edition is being released featuring a newly remastered version of the original album, a disc of rare single edits and B-sides, and a previously unreleased live performance recorded on August 27, 1986.
The set also includes a Blu-ray with the first HD release of the band’s classic 1986 concert film Live Without a Net, along with the original promotional video for Dreams. The album features enduring tracks such as Why Can’t This Be Love, Dreams, Love Walks In, and Best of Both Worlds.
As with the For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge and Balance expanded editions, the set includes a deluxe booklet featuring period band photography, backstage passes, promotional materials, advertisements, tape boxes, and tour ephemera.
Van Halen’s 5150 arrived in 1986 as both a reset button and a flex: the band was coming off the massive success of 1984, but also the very public exit of David Lee Roth—a split that left fans and the industry wondering whether the group’s identity could survive without its swaggering original frontman. The search for a replacement dragged on until mid-1985, when Sammy Hagar entered the picture and quickly clicked with the band (particularly Eddie) in a way that felt less like “hiring a new guy” and more like “forming a new version of the same machine.” That chemistry mattered because 5150wasn’t designed to softly reintroduce the band—it was built to prove they could still write radio monsters, play circles around almost anyone, and evolve their sound without apologizing for it.
The album’s creation also reflected a big behind-the-scenes shift: it was recorded at Eddie’s home base, 5150 Studios, which he’d built to give the band freedom from outside pressures and expensive commercial studio clocks. In later recollections, Eddie described how he even had to disguise the project in the planning process—submitting it as a “racquetball court” to get around zoning restrictions—underscoring how determined he was to control the band’s creative environment. That autonomy helped define 5150’s feel: compared to the more “live-wire” sonics of earlier records, this album leaned into a cleaner, bigger, more modern 1986 rock sheen, with keyboards and layered arrangements taking a more central role. The sessions ran from roughly November 1985 into February 1986, with production handled in-house (with Donn Landee heavily involved) alongside Mick Jones—notably without longtime producer Ted Templeman, whose absence became part of the conversation around the album’s stylistic pivot.
Songwriting-wise, the Hagar-era personality shows up immediately: 5150 still has the horsepower and flash people expected from Van Halen, but it also foregrounds melody, romance, and uplift in a way the Roth years usually treated as a side quest. You can hear it in the album’s balance of punchy rockers and big, emotional hooks—an approach that some fans embraced as “the band leveling up” and others dismissed as the moment the group went too polished (the “Van Hagar” nickname started circling fast, sometimes affectionately, sometimes not). The pop-minded confidence wasn’t accidental: the early singles were engineered to hit hard on FM radio and MTV while still sounding unmistakably like Eddie’s band.
Commercially, the strategy worked immediately and emphatically. Released March 24, 1986, 5150 became the band’s first No. 1 album in the U.S., reaching the top of the Billboard 200 on April 26, 1986—an achievement that doubled as a headline-worthy rebuttal to any “they’re finished” narratives after Roth. Internationally, it also performed strongly; for example, it reached a peak of No. 16 on the U.K.’s Official Albums Chart. The singles helped cement the crossover: “Why Can’t This Be Love” (the first single with Hagar) climbed to No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, announcing the new lineup as a chart force rather than a curiosity. Other hits from the era reinforced that staying power—Billboard’s own retrospective chart accounting places “Dreams” at No. 22 on the Hot 100.
Critically, the album landed in the middle of a cultural tug-of-war: reviewers could hear a band still “at the peak of its powers,” but the question was which powers fans valued most—Roth-era chaos and sleaze, or Hagar-era precision and songcraft. Rolling Stone was broadly positive at the time, framing 5150 as proof that it was still “a Van Halen world” and praising the sheer impact and confidence of the record. Over time, that split reaction has basically become part of 5150’s legacy: for many listeners it’s the moment Van Halen successfully became a bigger, more arena-polished pop-metal institution without losing its musicianship; for others it’s the starting line of a sleeker, less dangerous identity. Either way, the numbers—and the songs that still live on rock radio—made the verdict hard to argue: 5150 didn’t just introduce a new singer. It introduced a new, hugely successful version of the band.
Vinyl LP / 3 CD / 1 Blu-ray
LP – Side A
1. Good Enough
2. Why Can’t This Be Love
3. Get Up
4. Dreams
5. Summer Nights
LP – Side B
1. Best of Both Worlds
2. Love Walks In
3. 5150
4. Inside
CD 1
Original Album (2023 Remaster)
1. Good Enough
2. Why Can’t This Be Love
3. Get Up
4. Dreams
5. Summer Nights
6. Best of Both Worlds
7. Love Walks In
8. 5150
9. Inside
CD 2
Rarities
1. Best of Both Worlds (Edit)
2. Dreams (Edit)
3. Love Walks In (Edit)
4. Why Can’t This Be Love (Extended Version)
5. Dreams (Extended Version)
6. Best of Both Worlds (Live)
7. Rock and Roll (Live)
8. Love Walks In (Live)
CD 3
Live in New Haven, Connecticut, 1986
1. There’s Only One Way to Rock
2. Summer Nights
3. 5150
4. Panama
5. Best of Both Worlds
6. Love Walks In
7. Guitar Solo
8. I Can’t Drive 55
9. Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love
10. Wild Thing
11. Why Can’t This Be Love
12. Rock and Roll
Blu-ray
Live Without a Net (HD Upgrade)
Dreams (Promotional Video)
Pre-0rder now HERE