Starting the year on a high note (and you know he can belt a high note), Bruno Mars just announced that his new album is “done.” We don’t know much else about the project, but Mars joins other artists who’ve been teasing new music for the new year, from fellow Filipino-American pop star Olivia Rodrigo to Harry Styles.
There are also albums we’re sure are coming out this year, as A$AP Rocky, Gorillaz, and Robyn are set to make long-awaited comebacks. Sky Ferreira, meanwhile, still hasn’t released Masochism, the album she announced in 2024 and the supposed follow-up to the 2013 indie pop bible Night Time, My Time. So, without further suspense, here are four artists teasing new albums and six set for new releases in 2026.
Teases
Bruno Mars
We’re not sure if Mars’ latest project, which he’s kept under wraps, will even be released this year. But if he decides to drop it in 2026, it would also mark the 10th anniversary of his last solo album 24K Magic, and the fifth anniversary of An Evening With Silk Sonic, his joint project with Anderson .Paak. Following collaborations with Lady Gaga, ROSÉ, and Sexyy Red — each one demonstrating a different side of Mars as an artist — there’s no anticipating what the Grammy winner’s next album is going to sound like. We can at least expect him to birit like his Filipino ancestors.
Olivia Rodrigo
It’s been five years since “drivers license” catapulted Rodrigo into stardom, and now she’s calling back to the SOUR era in what looks to be an approaching album announcement. Her website displays a sign-up form stylized as a driver’s license renewal application with a pretend appointment set for January 8, the exact date she dropped “drivers license” in 2021.
Instagram also seems to have other clues. A photo dump from November shows the former Disney actress back in the studio, which means we can at least expect new music. Her most recent carousel post, captioned “hi 2026” also includes a photo of a golf cart with the words “The Album” decaled on the seat. Call me crazy, but after releasing her sophomore album GUTS in 2023 and a world tour that saw her visiting the Philippines, it may be high time for OR3.
Harry Styles
Over two years after concluding his “Love On Tour” in Italy, Harry Styles surprised fans by releasing an eight-minute video entitled “Forever, Forever.” The video includes footage from his last Italy show in July 2023, where he played an unreleased piano piece accompanied by strings and wind instruments. The video ends with the words “We belong together,” possibly teasing an album. It’s been almost four years since he released Harry’s House, which won Album of the Year at the Grammys in 2023, and nine years since his self-titled solo debut, so for fans of the ex-member of One Direction, new music may be long overdue.
Slayyyter
Catherine Grace Garner, better known as Slayyyter, had the party gays in a chokehold in the latter half of 2025, having dropped banger after banger in three grimy, razor-sharp singles. Between the releases of “BEAT UP CHANEL$,” “CANNIBALISM!,” and “CRANK,” fans of the American pop singer-songwriter have been begging her to release a new album to follow 2023’s dazzling STARFUCKER. It was her last release under indie outfit FADER Label before signing with Columbia Records in 2025.
Right on New Year’s Day, she teased another single, and days later wrote on X, “One more song and then I’ll let you know what’s up LOL.” If it’s a new album, then it will be the one to see Garner’s belated but so deserved rise. As Charli XCX appears to lean more into film these days, we need a dance pop artist with cult status, good hair, and queer fans to fill the void — and Slayyyter is poised to do so, but with a punk grittiness that is very much her own.
Releases
A$AP Rocky, ‘Don’t Be Dumb’
On January 5, A$AP Rocky dropped his latest single, “Punk Rocky.” While Rocky’s best known for hip-hop cuts, the new track, accompanied by a music video starring Winona Ryder, leans heavily into rock elements that set it apart from the rest of his oeuvre. With “Punk Rocky” being a part of his fifth album, set for release on January 6, one wonders what the rest of Don’t Be Dumb is going to sound like.
Danny L Harle, ‘Cerulean’
British DJ and producer Danny L Harle is no stranger to collaboration, having worked with the likes of Dua Lipa and Years & Years’ Olly Alexander. In 2025, he released three electrifying singles in collaboration with Caroline Polacheck, PinkPantheress, frequent Zara Larsson collaborator MNEK, and French singer Oklou — all in the lead-up to third album Cerulean, to be released on February 13. The album’s also set to feature more surprising collaborations with pop singer-songwriter Julia Michaels and indie darling Clairo.
Gorillaz, ‘The Mountain’
Nearly 30 years since forming, English band Gorillaz are still hard at work performing shows and releasing new music. On February 27, they drop The Mountain, their 11th album since their 2001 self-titled debut. Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett, who started the band in 1998, told Rolling Stone UK that the album explores ideas of life and death, inspired by a trip to India they took after experiencing personal losses at roughly the same time.
Robyn, ‘Sexistential’
Since the release of her glittery and cathartic single “Dopamine” in November, Robyn has been teasing a new album to follow 2018’s Honey, performing unreleased music during shows in the past month and dropping a website. Finally, on January 8, the “Dancing On Your Own” hitmaker announced her eighth album, Sexistential, to be released on March 27.
Tori Amos, ‘In Times of Dragons’
Just a year after releasing her last album, rock-chamber pop master Tori Amos is returning with her 18th studio album In Times of Dragons this spring. Although no specific date has been announced, Amos said that the new album is a “metaphorical story about the fight for democracy over tyranny, reflecting the current abhorrent non accidental burning down of democracy in real time by the ‘Dictator believing Lizard Demons’ in their usurpation of America.”
Kim Petras, ‘Detour’
Another exciting release this year is California-based German singer Kim Petras’ Detour, though she has yet to announce a release date. Working on the album are siblings Angel and Lulu Prost of the pop duo Frost Children, who’ve transformed Petras’ music into electroclash and 2010s pop EDM-inspired cuts. Only time will tell whether tracks like “I Like Ur Look” and “Freak It” merely belong to a nostalgic but passing trend in electronic music, but these singles are definitely great to put on full blast, and make for a promising eighth album, possibly even her best yet.
