U2 staged a BBC concert inside Tate Modern’s South Tank — an imposing brutalist space that somehow shrank to something far more personal once the band started. The show served as the first major live showcase for Carnaval De Luz, the band’s 16th studio album and first full-length collection of new material since 2017’s Songs of Experience. Brian Eno didn’t just contribute to the record — he was sitting in the audience, watching it performed back to him.
Rarity on the Setlist, Stones in the Gaps
U2 treated fifty years of songs as raw material, not a museum collection.
The set opened with “The Unforgettable Fire,” unplayed since 2018, then rolled into “Bad” — where Bono pulled threads from the Rolling Stones‘ “Ruby Tuesday” and “Sympathy for the Devil” mid-song. “The Greatest Show On Earth” received its live debut. This wasn’t a band coasting on catalogue. According to NME’s reporting, it was reconstruction happening in real time.
Key details from the night:
- Eno’s 77 Million Paintings surrounded the band in 360 degrees; he watched from the floor before joining onstage for the finale
- “Can’t Stop Us Now” debuted live — Bono and The Edge trading vocals on a track Eno co-wrote and played synthesizer on
- The audience included Noel Gallagher, Sadiq Khan, and Richard Curtis alongside art students, Tate Collective members, and BBC Music Introducing participants
- BBC Two and BBC iPlayer will broadcast the concert November 28; BBC Radio 2 and BBC Sounds on November 30
- Carnaval De Luz releases November 13, 2026; The Greatest Show On Earth tour opens in Mexico City, February 23, 2027, with Beck supporting Latin American dates
From the South Tank to Your Living Room
The BBC broadcast carries a night built for a few hundred out to everyone else.
Eno’s return to U2 runs deeper than a single night. His co-writing and synthesizer work spans three album tracks — “Go (Carnaval De Luz),” “The Greatest Show On Earth,” and “Can’t Stop Us Now” — reconnecting Carnaval De Luz to the Passengers project and Original Soundtracks 1 (1995), one of the band’s most experimentally restless periods. Add Martin Garrix, Daniel Lanois on pedal steel, and Ryan Tedder to the credits, and the collaborator list alone signals this is not a heritage act coasting on legacy.
Bono spoke about visiting sculptor Louise Bourgeois at her Chelsea home and singing “Amazing Grace” to her — a story that quietly anchored the evening’s emotional logic, connecting Tate’s artistic lineage to the new material, per NME’s reporting.
Then Eno walked onstage for “With or Without You.” The crowd responded with a football chant: “Eno. Eno. Eno.” The warmth in that moment felt entirely unrehearsed.
The album arrives November 13. The tour begins February 2027. A band that chose a concrete gallery over an arena to reintroduce itself — and made the room feel like the biggest venue in the world. BBC Two and BBC Sounds bring the full set to everyone who wasn’t in that South Tank — and the album lands November 13.
