U2 new nuovo album and tour - images

Before the band's new album is released at the end of 2026, the EP 'U2-Days of Ash' is a side project comprising five new songs and a poem: 'American Obituary', 'The Tears of Things', 'Song of the Future', 'Wildpeace', 'One Life at a Time' and 'Yours Eternally' (in collaboration with Ed Sheeran and Taras Topolia). It is an immediate response to current global events and is inspired by the many extraordinary and courageous people who are fighting on the front line for freedom. Four of the five songs are about people – a mother, a father, a teenage girl – whose lives were brutally cut short. The fifth is about a soldier who would rather sing, but is ready to die for his country's freedom. 'It was exciting to be all four of us together in the studio again last year,' says Bono. 'The Days of Ash songs are very different in atmosphere and theme from those we'll include on our album later this year. These EP tracks couldn't wait; these songs were eager to be shared with the world. They are songs of defiance and dismay, of lament. There will be celebration songs, we're working on them now... because despite all the terrible things we see normalised every day on our small screens, there's nothing normal about these crazy and frustrating times, and we must oppose them before we can regain trust in the future. And in each other”.

“American Obituary” recounts the shocking event that the world witnessed in Minneapolis, Minnesota on 7 January 2026, when Renée Nicole Macklin Good, a mother of three with high ideals, was killed at close range while exercising her right to protest peacefully, a right protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.