U2: surprise live show at Dublin's Mount Temple, where they formed 50 years ago – Watch the videos. The concert setlist

Fifty years on, U2 have returned to exactly the place where it all began. Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. celebrated the band's half-century with a special concert in the courtyard of Mount Temple Comprehensive School in Dublin, the school that in September 1976 unwittingly served as the setting for the band's formation. It was there, in fact, that a very young Larry Mullen Jr. put up a simple notice on the noticeboard: "Drummer seeks musicians to form band". From that call and the first meetings between the students, one of the most important bands in rock history would be born. On 25 September 2026, U2 returned to Mount Temple to celebrate the anniversary in front of around a thousand students and staff, performing in the very place where they had taken their first steps over half a century earlier.

Between past and future

The concert was also an opportunity to connect the past and future of the Irish band. The short seven-song set opened with the classic "I Will Follow" and continued with "Vertigo" and "Beautiful Day", before reaching back for "Out Of Control", U2's debut single, originally released in 1979.
Attention then turned to the present with "Silencio", the new single taken from "Carnaval De Luz", U2's fifteenth album, announced right on the eve of the anniversary and due out on November 13. It's a return to record shops nine years after their last album of new material, "Songs Of Experience", which the band chose to symbolically unveil in the very place where their journey began.
One of the most striking moments came with "One": for the performance, U2 were joined onstage by 32 young string musicians from Music Generation, one representing each of the 32 counties of the island of Ireland. The concert closed with "With Or Without You".

The U2 concert setlist

I Will Follow
Vertigo
Beautiful Day
Out Of Control
Silencio
One
With Or Without You

The new album

On September 24, U2 announced a new album, due out on November 13 via Island. It will be the Irish band's fifteenth studio album and will be titled "Carnaval De Luz". It marks their first full-length collection of original material since "Songs Of Experience", released in 2017.
Leading the way, on September 24, is "Silencio", the new single that officially opens a new recording era nine years in the making. Bono has spoken of a renewed creative drive within the band, hinting that the new record won't be a simple nostalgic exercise, but an attempt to once again chart a different direction for U2.

The release of "Silencio" also falls on the eve of a particularly significant anniversary: September 25, 2026 marks fifty years since the band's formation. It was in September 1976 that Larry Mullen Jr., then just fourteen, put up a notice at his school looking for musicians. The first rehearsals took place in the kitchen of the Mullen family home in Dublin, and out of that lineup emerged the quartet of Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. Fifty years on, the four are still together, and they've chosen to mark the anniversary by looking primarily to the future. "Silencio" is the first taste of "Carnaval de Luz", the album with which U2 will end the longest gap of their career between two records of new songs.
Sonically, "Carnaval De Luz" aims to pick up the thread of some of U2's most experimental periods, without giving up rigorous songwriting. That much is clear from tracks like "The Greatest Show On Earth", "Glorify" and "Midnight Sunshine", while "Silencio", clocking in at just 2 minutes and 35 seconds, recaptures the almost surf-punk urgency of the Dublin band's early days.
The origins of the record date back to the same creative period that produced "Days Of Ash" and "Easter Lily", the two six-track EPs U2 released as surprises in early 2026. The three works seem to form a kind of journey shaped by the liturgical calendar: the Carnival of "Carnaval De Luz", a celebration of the flesh, precedes the renunciation and reflection of Lent, before finally arriving at the rebirth of Easter.

The new U2 album also features a sizeable cast of collaborators. Brian Eno co-writes "Go (Carnaval De Luz)", "The Greatest Show On Earth" and "Can't Stop Us Now" with the band, also contributing synthesizers. Martin Garrix, meanwhile, is among the writers of "Glorify", while Daniel Lanois plays pedal steel on "Torn". That very track features Dolly Parton, in what is being described as her final recorded vocal performance. "Torn", the album's closing track, is also the connecting point with the two EPs. Written by U2 together with Parton herself and Johnny McDaid, "Torn" moves within country coordinates, starting out from a story of broken family ties before widening its meaning to a more universal dimension. Ryan Tedder, finally, handled some of the additional production on "Silencio".

The tracklist and cover art for "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)

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