The War on Drugs Tease New Album, Add 2026 U.S. Dates

The War on Drugs are starting to look like an album-cycle band again. Consequence reports that the group has added a handful of 2026 U.S. headline dates around its fall festival calendar, while Adam Granduciel has been talking publicly about a new record that is nearing the finish line.

In a new Guitar.com interview, Granduciel says, “Yeah I’m almost done making a record, and we’re close to the end.” He describes the next War on Drugs album as an attempt to do something “not different, necessarily, in terms of the way it sounds,” but with an eye toward “trying to get back to the first couple of records I made.” That is a small quote with a lot of implications for a band whose last proper studio album, I Don’t Live Here Anymore, arrived in 2021.

Granduciel also calls the record “basically fully homemade,” though he immediately undercuts the modesty of that phrase by joking about people coming to his house and seeing vintage API and Neve gear. The useful part is the process detail: he says the only way to make this record was with “all the time and the access” to do it the way he wanted, adding, “It still sounds like a band, but there’s all sorts of stuff.”

That sounds like classic War on Drugs tension: the fantasy of a room full of players pushing air together, filtered through one obsessive studio brain that keeps chasing shimmer until the edges disappear. If the new material really does pull back toward the earlier records without pretending the last decade of stadium-scale drift never happened, that is a more interesting promise than a clean reset.

The newly announced shows include Wilmington, Asheville, Birmingham, and Las Vegas, joining festival stops at Bourbon & Beyond and Austin City Limits. Consequence reports that tickets for the new headline shows go on sale Friday, May 15 at 10 a.m. local time. Support varies by date, with I Think Like Midnight, Okonski, and Lo Moon listed for select shows.

No album title or release date has been announced yet, so this is still a smoke-signal moment rather than a full rollout. But for a band this tied to slow-build momentum, smoke signals count.