Upcoming Releases

This section collects information about upcoming U2 releases, their status, and provide news links to updates about these projects. It will also detail information about other projects that the band are involved in such as solo projects, and other expected appearances. Below the updates on each project are links to news stories about upcoming projects where you can find more information about these releases. As things are officially announced, they are moved to their own discography entries on the site.

Last Updated: March 5, 2023

Upcoming and Recent Releases

Please note: We present information here that sometimes has not been announced. When choosing to present this information, we will look at previous reliability of our sources, and wait until we have confirmation from multiple sources. Regardless of this, anything that we publish that has not been officially announced is marked a rumour.

Upcoming Releases

Projects Detailed Below:

  • Late 2023 / Early 2024: Songs of ?
  • Later Still: Songs of Ascent
  • 2024 or Later: Biopic series to debut on Netflix.
  • Additional Projects

Additional Details:

Album of New Songs: Songs of ?

Expected Date: Late 2023 / Early 2024

This album has not officially been announced. No title has been given, although it’s likely to continue the “Songs of” format, and Adam, jokingly, has called it Songs for Fighting.

Since 2017 members of U2 have suggested they will leave Songs of Ascent on the back burner for now, and will focus on an album of newer material first. This project is expected to be an album of louder rock songs, and is expected before the quieter songs of Songs of Ascent. The exact state of completion is not known. Rumours have suggested this album is substantially complete, and will be released after the Las Vegas performances this Fall if the band are in a position to contemplate a world tour.

Work on Songs of Surrender was said to be complete in late 2021. It is known that the band have been recording since that time. Bono and The Edge recorded in Dave Stewart’s studio in the Bahamas in January 2022, which is after the album Songs of Surrender was said to be finished. In April 2022, the band spent some time in California recording, possibly at Ryan Tedder’s studio. The Edge is also known to have worked in recording studios in Belfast and Dublin in the summer of 2022.

Quotes from the Band and Others:

  • 2017-12: “We’ve certainly got lots of leftover pieces, but by the time we come to make another record, I’m sure we’ll start from scratch.” (Adam Clayton, Chris Evans Show, BBC Radio 2)
  • 2019-09: “I spoke to them just last week. We will work together on some new pieces when I am in Los Angeles. I think it’s their intention to make a record completely different from the last two. It will be easier. You know, it’s like a pendulum. When you make a very produced album, with so many instruments in it, the next project you want it to be more sparse, and you wonder, what if the disc had the sound of four musicians playing in a room?” (Ryan Tedder, Rockol, Link)
  • 2019-10: “I’d also love to do just a straightforward-fuck-off-rock-and-roll album with this band. Because on this last tour, they’ve got to a place, I mean they’ve been there before, I think they’ve always had greatness in them, but we do a lot of very good in between the great. I felt like I just caught up to them on this last tour. And there were moments on the circular stage, the e-stage, on the Experience and Innocence tour, and they hit some powerful stuff. I’d like to find songs that could contain that fire.” (Bono, Cry Power Podcast)
  • 2019-11: Dallas School, guitar tech for the Edge, told fans at an event in Australia, organized by Naomi Dinnen, that U2 were making a new album, and he thought fans would like it.
    2020-07: “I’m always working on new songs. I’ve not stopped since we came off the road, so yes. The question, I suppose, is whether we have a plan to finish or release it. Not so far. But there’s a lot of exciting music being created.” (The Edge, Rolling Stone)
  • 2020-07: Asked if they were working on new material, Adam Clayton shared, “We are. There’s always something on the go, as I’m sure Edge mentioned. We did some recording last year that got us some really great starting points and complete songs. There’s an album ready to go, we’re just not quite sure when we want to press that button. When I say ready to go, I mean ready to be completed. Let’s put it that way.” Rolling Stone clarified, “So the songs are written, but you have to record them and get them right?” and Adam replied “Exactly.” Adam also went back to the idea that this new album being developed is not Songs of Ascent but something new, “It’s very, very fresh. We’ve cut everything quite quickly. We’re coming to things in a shorthand way. The feedback we get from that is pretty good. We want to be quick, down and dirty with the next one.” (Adam Clayton, Rolling Stone)
  • 2020-09: “I was actually working on some new songs with Bono and I had a decision, am I going to go to Dublin or am I going to head to California where my wife was, so I opted to head for the wife which I think was the right call. Cause literally within two days they’d shut all flights into America, so I snuck in and spent the first part of lockdown with Morleigh in California, and then came to Dublin for early May and was in Dublin for a while.” (The Edge with Jo Whiley, BBC Radio Two)
  • 2021-01: “I’m working on a lot of new songs at the moment. We have a bunch that are…we haven’t figured out what to do with them yet. For me the lockdown has been quite a creative period for me.” (The Edge with Daniel Lanois, U2 X-Radio)
  • 2021-05: Steve Lillywhite revealed he’s been speaking with U2 regarding new music they’ve been working on in studio in London at that time. Lillywhite said the band are quite excited about the material. (Steve Lillywhite, Talk Radio)
  • 2021-07: “But at the same time, we have ambitions, once we can see a reason to put out another record. There are songs being siloed that will be brought out when we are ready to do a record.” (Adam Clayton, Rockonteurs Podcast)
  • 2021-11: “We have new songs and we’re hoping to release an album in a couple of years, but we can’t talk much about it yet. I will just say that some of the tracks fill us with pride.” (Adam Clayton, O Globo)
  • 2021-11: “The band is locked in the tower of song and working away on a bunch of new things. I’m just having so much fun writing and not necessarily having to think about where it’s going to go.” (The Edge, Rolling Stone) (He also revealed the band had not yet settled on a producer)
  • 2021-11: “It’s nice to work without a purpose. Which is to say, it’s not like somebody is coming up and saying we have to have a U2 album or we have to have a U2 tour. We’ve been talking, and are excited to work together again. In the next few weeks there will be some recording.” (Bono, The Today Show)
  • 2021-12: “At 50 we said to ourselves that there were good reasons to stay together and to continue working together. We have a great history after all. Today we are all in our 60s and we can’t wait to enter a new chapter in our history. We are working to rearrange some of our tracks in acoustic versions, to reveal new emotions. In addition, we are preparing new songs, for an album which should be released in 2023. And if circumstances allow it, we will go on a world tour at that time. It’s been a long time since we last performed in public.” (Adam Clayton, Le Figaro)
  • 2022-10: “We have almost finished this album called Songs of Ascent, which we’re not putting out. We’re going to put out a rock ‘n’ roll album.” Bono also shares, ‘A noisy, uncompromising, unreasonable guitar album’ is what is planned, “In among that unreasonableness, it is likely that I will put the part of me, the anger that hasn’t been managed to good use.” (Bono, The New York Times)
  • 2022-10: “The band wants to make an ‘uncompromising, balls-to-the-wall, transcendent rock’n‘roll album, with unreasonable guitars, like properly aggressive as the times deserve” and spoke about wanting to recreate the band’s live experience in the studio, and that they want to start recording the final album by the end of the year. Bono also shared he believed the band have their best album in them still, but getting it out might “cost us a lot.” (Bono, The Irish Times)
  • 2022-10: “Now we need the firepower of rock ‘n’ roll back. I don’t know who is going to make our [expletive]-off rock ‘n’ roll album. You almost want an AC/DC, you want Mutt Lange. The approach. The discipline. The songwriting discipline. That’s what we want.” (Bono, The New York Times)
  • 2023-02: “We are turning the amps on. I certainly think the rock that we all grew up with as 165- and 17-year-olds, that rawness of those Patti Smith, Iggy Pop records…that kind of power is something we would love to connect back into.” (Adam Clayton, Mojo Magazine)
  • 2023-02: “Well, ‘Songs of Ascent’ is a much more meditative, spiritual record. This will be ‘Songs For Fighting’, I’d say (laughs).” (Adam Clayton, Mojo Magazine)
  • 2023-03: “I don’t think there’s any chance of the future drying up! I’ve been working on [other] new stuff in parallel that’s much more vital and requires a U2 band sound to fulfill it.” (Edge, The Telegraph Newspaper)
  • 2023-03: “I’m not sure U2 are going to turn into AC/DC exactly. I’ll still be trying to find ways to use the instrument that are new and unfamiliar. But I’m absolutely convinced that the guitar is going to be front and centre within mainstream music culture in a year or two, and I want to be part of that revival.” (Edge, The Telegraph Newspaper)
  • 2023-03: “So every time I think of quitting, I kind of reinvent U2. We all know that we shine brighter by being in proximity to each other,” he continues. “That’s why it’s going to be very difficult to break up U2 – simply because it works so well for us all.” (Edge, The Telegraph Newspaper)

Album of New Songs: Songs of Ascent

Expected Date: A Few Years Off

Although not officially announced, Bono has been speaking about an album called Songs of Ascent since 2008. Originally planned as the follow-up to No Line on the Horizon the band have since found reasons to explore newer material. But it has been revealed they do eventually plan on coming back to Songs of Ascent.

Although U2 have returned to material recorded with Eno and Lanois for Songs of Ascent from time-to-time, the albums released since have been developed from original ideas, and Lanois has shared a few years ago that Songs of Ascent remains mostly unreleased. “Every Breaking Wave”, “Mercy” and “Soon” have been heard from the 2009 tracks, and “North Star” featured in one of the Transformers film.

This will not be the next U2 album. The band are instead working on a harder sounding, Rock-n-Roll album first, which is covered above. Songs of Ascent will follow that album at some undefined point in the future.

Quotes from the Band and Others:

  • 2009-02: “It will be a more meditative album on the theme of pilgrimage.” Bono also shares the album will be released before the end of 2009. (Bono, The Guardian)
  • 2009-02: In the New York Times the band shares that a companion album to No Line on the Horizon will have a more meditative and processional tone, and will be out before the end of the year.
  • 2009-03: “In many ways, it’s that ghost album of hymns and Sufi singing. We’re making a kind of heartbreaker, a meditative, reflective piece of work, but not indulgent.” (Bono, Rolling Stone)
  • 2009-06: In The Irish Independent it’s revealed, “While a spring release date had been mentioned, Bono seems to damping down that expectation now, saying that while they have nine pieces of music that they think are really special, the album will only come out if and when it is as good or better than No Line. And it certainly won’t come out, as was reported in some media, this year.”
  • 2009-07: “It is still on the cards, but we don’t really have plans that we can sign up to that far out. We would love the idea of the next record being sooner rather than later. We certainly have the material for it, but it’s about whether we have the time to finish it. It depends on how the touring progresses.” (The Edge, Hot Press)
  • 2009-09: “We’ve got a few albums up our sleeves. We’ve got a whole album we started with Rick Rubin, which is a rocking club album with beats and big guitars, and I can’t wait to get back to that. So we’re going to see where the mood takes us. But it’s not like we have to start afresh. We have five or six songs on that album. We have about 12 on the Songs of Ascent, plus The Edge and myself have written Spiderman: The Musical — that’s nearly done.” (Bono, Toronto Sun)
  • 2009-10: “It’s a very intimate affair. They are beautiful love songs, where the object of love is not always obvious.” (Bono, USA Today)
  • 2010-08: Bono shares with Rolling Stone that the band are working on four albums, including a “rock album”, “a club-sounding album”, tracks from Spider-Man and Songs of Ascent.
    NOTE: Around this point the band switched focus to the work with Danger Mouse, which would eventually become Songs of Innocence. The songs for Songs of Ascent were shelved at this time for the most part, although “Every Breaking Wave” would be worked on and released.
  • 2011-06: “We haven’t had time to go back to that material and complete it. Everyone was a bit gutted, because I think it would have been great to have got to the end of this year and have a new record out. It’s not my favorite decision to put it back, but it was the only sensible decision.” (Adam Clayton, Rolling Stone)
  • 2012-01: “We’re working on three albums at the moment and we haven’t decided what order we’re going to put them out but the Songs of Ascent have the kind of beautiful intimacy that we’re speaking of now.” (Bono, U2.Com)
  • 2014-10: “Songs of Ascent will come, and there are some beautiful songs.” promises Bono, who also shares he now sees it as the third part of a trilogy. (Bono, Rolling Stone)
  • 2016-09: “Songs of Ascent is still in the pipeline, we’re gonna go back to that at some point.” (Adam Clayton with Dave Fanning)
  • 2019-10: “We have this beautiful, ecstatic album called Songs of Ascent, I don’t know if we’ll finish it soon or if it will take forever – it’s about forever – that’s its subject – Songs of Ascent are 15 psalms, they’re named after the 15 steps from the women’s chamber up to the Temple of Jerusalem. It’s an old idea. I’m obsessed with David, King David in the bible, who turns out was right bollocks, but he was kind of an interesting figure, he was brutally honest with God at all times, even about himself being a bollocks. I’d love to do that.” He also made it clear the band might work on other projects first. (Cry Power Podcast)
  • 2022-10: My phone here is packed with new songs. We were tempted to put them out – out of competition. But we felt that the material was so strong that it deserved time to make sure people heard about them as well as heard them. When we’re in the room together with Larry and Adam, it’s great. I’ll play you one. This is a great one. Honestly, there’s about 20 of them finished. This is my favourite at the moment. It’s called ‘The Bard’s Last Breath.’ We almost finished this album called Songs of Ascent which we’re not putting out. We’re going to put out a rock ‘n’ roll album. So we’re not putting this out, but I’m telling you it’s awesome.” Upon further questions Bono clarified the album is NOT scrapped, “Didn’t scrap it, just held it. It’s called Songs of Ascent.”(Bono, The New York Times)
    2022-10: Bono shares some lyrics, “It’s a matter of degrees, but the bard was never pleased to wake up in the morning/And he said, ‘Rise, rise, the sun will rise and will set/It will rise, rise, and it hurries to forget.’/He said ‘Rise! Rise! All are leaving just not yet.’/He said, ‘Rise! Rise! With his very last breath.” (The Bard’s Last Breath) and “You make me smile, It’s been a while, You put a smile, Back on my face, back on my face.” (Smile) Bono calls “The Bard’s Last Breath” a song of pure joy, and calls “Smile”, “a very cool, Beatle-y thing, a ridiculous pop sort of Rubber Soul isn’t it?” (Bono, The New York Times)

U2 Biopic Series: Netflix

Expected Date: In 2-3 Years

  • Although not officially announced, the producer of the project has confirmed it is in the works.
  • In March 2022 it was announced in Variety that U2 are working on a multi-year series on Netflix to document their career.
  • The show isn’t written, and isn’t cast. It is still a number of years away.
  • It is expected that there will be at least three seasons, and that the actors cast as the band will be recast as the series moves to later years.
  • JJ Abrams is the executive producer of the project and is working with writer Anthony McCarten (Bohemian Rhapsody) on scripts.
  • If this is being eyed as a replacement for The Crown when it finishes next season, we likely won’t see a first season until 2024 or later.
  • More Information:

Additional Solo Projects:

Adam: Kristel

  • Adam Clayton worked with Kristel, who hail from Madagascar on their 2021 EP, “Take It Easy“
  • Adam was credited with advising the band on mix and arrangements.
  • Adam was recently pictured back in studio with Kristel and producer John Reynolds. Kristel are working on a follow up release.
  • More info about what we know

Bono and Edge: North Star

  • Bono and Edge are said to be close to signing on to do work on the score for the film North Star
  • Part of that deal would also include writing a song “North Star” for the film.
  • Filming is said to start in 2023, so this one is likely some time off.
  • More info about what we know

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