U2 will release their 16th album, Carnaval De Luz, on November 13 via Interscope Records. The set is the band’s first LP of new material in nine years. Along with the announcement, the quartet have dropped a brand-new track, “Silencio” and an accompanying music video.
The news arrives 50 years to the week since Larry Mullen Jr. pinned a handwritten letter to the noticeboard of the Mount Temple Comprehensive School on the Northside of Dublin in September 1976 that said, “Drummer Seeks Musicians To Form Band.”
The band explains, “Recorded all over the place and produced by Jacknife Lee, Carnaval De Luz is a collection of 12 songs exploring themes of spirituality, friendship, freedom and endurance in the face of dark, encroaching forces. Sonically, there are echoes of the band’s most experimental work combined with some strict songwriting in the shape of ‘The Greatest Show On Earth,’ ‘Glorify’ and ‘Midnight Sunshine,’ as well as the 2mins 35second homage to early surf-punk insolence that is ‘Silencio.’”
The roots of Carnaval De Luz can be traced directly to U2’s two surprise six-track 2026 EPs, which were recorded during the same creative period as the new album. Those releases, Days of Ash and Easter Lily, followed the liturgical calendar, and so Carnaval De Luz “sits, stands and dances before them in timeline. Carnival, a celebration of the flesh, ‘carne’, before the denial that is Lent, a period of reflection, and the rebirth of Easter. The song connecting the album and two EPs is the final track on the new album, ‘Torn,’ a duet between Bono and the late, great Dolly Parton, in what has sadly turned out to be her last recorded vocal performance. Co-written by U2, Parton and Johnny McDaid, it’s a tender country song detailing broken family ties that holds wider resonances.”
Carnaval De Luz, which is part of U2’s official 50th anniversary celebration, also features contributions from friends and past collaborators like Brian Eno (co-writing and synthesizers on “Go (Carnaval De Luz),” “The Greatest Show on Earth” and “Can’t Stop Us Now”), Martin Garrix (co-writing on “Glorify”) and Daniel Lanois (playing pedal steel on “Torn”). Ryan Tedder added additional production on “Silencio.”
“It’s a messy, provocative, sacred collection of songs — and features the first-ever use of flat-wound strings on a U2 recording. Just saying,” The Edge said in a statement. Meanwhile, Bono added, “Roll up, roll up, roll up! Bring your purple socks, your broken hearts, your rose-tinted naivety… oh be amazed in the hall of mirrors. There will be loud guitars, deep bass, some ecstatic rhythms and, yes, some silver tears will make an appearance! 'Cause in the near distance just outside our carnival of light there are all kinds of creatures… the same imagination that brings us our creativity can also bring us monsters. So we make the drums louder. We build a bigger fire. We make our stories wilder and funnier. We make the melodies sweeter and the songs, they better shine, because if the world is in darkness we better not be.”
Carnaval De Luz
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
Torn (Feat. Dolly Parton)
