U2 share “The Greatest Show On Earth” and first dates of their 2027 world tour

U2 released a new single, “The Greatest Show On Earth”, on 15 October 2026 and announced the first dates of their 2027 world stadium tour. The song is the latest preview of “Carnaval De Luz”, the band’s 16th studio album, due on 13 November. Co-written with Brian Eno, it tells of lovers struggling to keep faith in each other and in faith itself, with prominent guitar work from The Edge.

The black-and-white video, directed by Anton Corbijn and shot in the California desert, satirises the band as a masked religious cult in which women do all the heavy lifting. The track follows the singles “Silencio” and “Street Of Dreams”. The album closes with “Torn”, Dolly Parton’s last recorded performance, and includes “The Mirror Maker (Rosalía)”, a tribute to the Spanish singer.

The tour opens in Mexico City at Estadio GNP Seguros (23 and 26 February), then moves to São Paulo’s Estádio MorumBIS (10 and 12 March) and Buenos Aires’ Estadio River Plate (23 and 26 March), with Beck as support. General sale starts on 22 October, with a U2.com subscriber pre-sale on 19 October. According to NME, dates for the UK, Europe and North America will follow. The band called the show “a bit of showman, a bit of shaman”.

U2 formed in Dublin in 1976. Their previous studio album, “Songs Of Experience”, came out in 2017. In September mbuzz reported that the band were preparing their first stadium tour since “The Joshua Tree Tour” in 2019, and in early October that Jack White’s Third Man Records would press a limited-edition vinyl of the new album.