“I’ll tell you what freedom is to me: no fear” – Nina Simone.
How do you respond to a year that saw a lifetime’s worth of chaos explode? Courtroom dramas and blacklisting, media madness and political policing, prime ministers intervening in festival lineups, attempts at censorship and stifling of expression? Kneecap aren’t having any of that. There is finer art to be made. So, how do you respond? As the saying goes: is fearr lúbadh ná briseadh – it’s better to bend than to break.
Kneecap return in 2026 to bend genre, language, and rules. There will be no backing down. No reticence. No cowardice. No retreat. The most talked about artists in the world are turning the page. A new chapter, new sounds, new manifestos.
The Belfast-Derry trio are back with a blistering album that revels in darkness while bursting through the void with illuminated revery. This is FENIAN.
Produced by Dan Carey (Fontaines D.C., Kae Tempest, Wet Leg), FENIAN upends expectations with an incredibly expansive sonic palate, traversing acid house, trip-hop, dubstep, and more, re-announcing Kneecap as utterly authentic and exceptionally creative artists of their generation.
Masters of rave and rap theatre, FENIAN represents Kneecap’s most sophisticated exploration of language and sounds. What began in 2017 as a DIY project with rudimentary hip-hop beats, has grown into a global movement. With FENIAN, Kneecap reclaim their creative territory developing massively along their own singular trajectory while the headlines were blasting and festival sound systems were blaring.
Following their BAFTA and Sundance-award-winning self-titled biopic, their critically acclaimed debut album, Fine Art, a Coachella performance that changed the culture and saw Kneecap centred as artists at the fore of the Palestine solidarity movement, a breathtaking Glastonbury performance, and becoming the most talked about rap group on the planet – never-mind the protests, murals, court appearances, countless front pages, relentless global media coverage, and massive shows around the world – Kneecap have resolved to do what they do best: make incredible tunes that bring thousands upon thousands of fans together to tear the place up.
More darkness. More confrontation. More craic. More energy. More solidarity. More absolute bangers. And more fuel for the unrelenting engine that powers this unstoppable force. For their remarkable second album, Kneecap have come out fighting.
Beginning with a rallying call for the Irish language in ‘Éire go Deo’, then comes ‘Smugglers & Scholars’, smashing open the doors of the album. This is a sonic balaclava, loaded with menace and fearlessness.
Then it’s off to the ‘Carnival’, a middle finger to the political, media, and police distraction tactics that saw a spotlight shine on Kneecap in the midst of a genocide, all while concocting an immediate earworm of a chorus.
‘Palestine (feat. Fawzi)’ is potentially Kneecap’s most powerful track to date, a blistering and incredibly moving expression of transnational solidarity that rips the oppressive force of colonialism apart and unites those who suffer under it as victors within the same struggle.
If anyone is mad enough to think Kneecap would buckle under the pressure exerted by the British political establishment, then listen to ‘Liars Tale’. This riotous punk-rave track eviscerates Kier Starmer’s craven attempts to silence and suppress Kneecap’s movement. This is followed by the album’s title track, an immediate Kneecap anthem, with a fists-in-the-air hook bound to rattle the walls of stadium-sized raves.
The urgent acid house of ‘Big Bad Mo’ flips from euphoria to a relentless chase of beats, before landing in the chaos of Headcase, a brilliantly hectic track about imploding masculinity, addiction, and the dangers of taking the road to nowhere.
‘An Ra’ subverts what you think the track might be about: in this case, the RA is actually Ríocht Aontaithe (Irish for the United Kingdom). Building on the Irish legacy of piercing the vacuousness of British colonialism, Kneecap’s blistering satire takes aim at British neoliberalism, and its far-right and authoritarian reflexes as expressed through toxic capitalism and imperialist oppression – all of that in an absolute bop.
‘Cold at the Top’ takes that satirical impulse and redirects it inward with a rollicking self-deprecating tale about the narcissism of fame and the hedonism that inevitably follows celebrity. Then we’re in the ‘Occupied 6’, laying low under the cover of darkness, the violence of the British occupation of the six counties conjured with cinematic genius. Here, the trauma of war seeps to the surface – a haunting hardness cut with the grit of the kind of bleak humour it takes to survive.
‘Gael Phonics’ is a lesson in the Irish language like no other, while ‘Cocaine Hill’ ascends the woozy anxiety of the grip of cocaine-induced insomnia. FENIAN ends with ‘Irish Goodbye’, an unexpectedly tender tribute to the weight of love that grief contains.
Throughout, the sirens and alarms ring, and the chorus’s blast. Revolutionary and rebellious, confrontational and impossibly catchy, inescapably intelligent and brilliantly rendered, FENIAN doesn’t just represent the next phase in Kneecap’s trajectory but stands as a remarkable record that thrills as much as it surprises. The mayhem of their breakout year is a memory now. But Kneecap are neither dwelling on that nor merely persevering through it. In FENIAN they excel, reaching a new peak that is undeniable in its mastery.
Closing 2025 with two sold out nights in front of 24,000 Fenians at Dublin’s huge 3Arena, and beginning the year with a tour of Japan, 2026 will see Kneecap play their biggest headline show to date at Crystal Palace Park in London, as well as multiple festival headline slots. Pressure makes diamonds, and FENIAN glistens with Kneecap’s uncut gems.
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