Rock band Muse will be heading to London’s O2 Brixton Academy next month for an intimate, one-off gig. They will play the 5,000 capacity venue on April 3, which will be their first show back in the capital since September 2023. They announced the show to their Instagram this morning in the post below.
The last time the trio played the Brixton Academy was in May 2001, a two-night residency taking place shortly ahead of their second album, ‘Origin of Symmetry.’ Now, the band will take the stage two months ahead of the release of their tenth studio album, ‘The WOW! Transmission.’ The lead single, ‘Be With You’ is out now.
The band’s announcement of the night at Brixton Academy described the gig as a ‘live transmission,’ a phrase that is part of the interstellar concept their upcoming album sports. Described in a press release as taking its name from “one of the most compelling interstellar mysteries of the last century: a powerful 72-second radio burst detected in 1977 originating from the constellation Sagittarius with a bandwidth and intensity that suggested a possible extraterrestrial source. The astronomer who discovered the anomaly famously circled the now-iconic sequence 6EQUJ5 and wrote ‘WOW!’ on the printout beside it – giving the signal its name and cementing its place in scientific and pop-culture lore.”
The band used sci-fi theming in their recent teaser videos, which built up to the album’s announcement on Thursday 19 March. The announcement came in the form of a livestream of a tablet, launched around 33km in the air, flashing the words: “INCOMING TRANSMISSION. NEW ALBUM: ‘THE WOW! SIGNAL’ . 26.JUNE.2026. THE SINGLE ‘BE WITH YOU’ OUT NOW.” The video can be seen here, on the band’s Instagram.
The 10-track album is reported to cover “a mix of cosmic mystery, existential hope, and the exhilarating possibility of contact with something far greater than ourselves.” The 2025 single, ‘Unravelling’ will be included on the album. Released in June of last year, the track was produced by Bring Me the Horizon collaborator Dan Lancaster, who also joined Muse as a live member in 2022.
The latest single, ‘Be With You’ blends a powerful organ introduction with spacey synthesisers and classic chugging guitar riffs. One fan wrote on YouTube, “Muse doesn’t need a genre, they are the genre.” Genre-bending and boundary-pushing for the entirety of their over 30 year career, Muse shows no sign of falling in line with their tenth studio release.
Tickets for the Brixton Academy show go on sale 10 AM GMT next Friday, 27 March. With pre-sale taking place at the same time on Wednesday 25 March. Fans can access this by preordering ‘The WOW Signal!’ on the band’s official site. Registration for pre-sale closes at 11:59 AM GMT on Tuesday, 24 March.
The full track list of ‘The WOW! Signal’
1. The Dark Forest
2. Nightshift Superstar
3. Shimmering Scars
4. Cryogen
5. Be With You
6. Hexagons
7. The Sickness In You and I
8. Unravelling
9. Hush
10. Space Debris
Releases on 26 June 2026.
