U2 have released two EPs in 2026 and they have done it quietly, without a stadium tour announcement or a Sphere residency or any of the infrastructure the band has spent the last decade hiding behind. Days of Ash came out on Ash Wednesday. Easter Lily arrived this week, on schedule with the liturgical calendar. Both are small, serious records. Both have Brian Eno in the vicinity. Both feel, genuinely, like the band is trying to figure something out.

This is worth paying attention to, because U2 trying to figure something out has historically produced extraordinary music, and U2 not trying to figure something out has produced Songs of Innocence on your iPhone without your consent.

The context here matters. U2 spent the last few years navigating a complicated position: a massive, globally beloved rock band with a decades-long humanitarian brand, trying to speak to the political moment while also completing a residency on the Las Vegas Strip. The Sphere shows were technically astonishing. They were also insular. A monument to the band’s own history.

Easter Lily is not that. The opener, “Song for Hal,” is a tribute to their late friend and producer Hal Willner, who died from COVID in 2020. It is a song about grief and friendship and what you owe the people who helped you become who you are. The title track is named after Patti Smith’s 1978 album Easter, which Bono has said gave him hope as a teenager in Dublin. The closing track, “Coexist (I Will Bless the Lord at All Times?),” produced by Eno, was written for parents of children in war zones. The question mark in the title is doing real work.

Bono’s statement about the EP asked several questions directly: “Are our own relationships up to these challenging times? How hard do you fight for friendship? Can our faith survive the mangling of meaning that those algorithms love to reward?” These are not press release questions. They are the kind of questions a person asks when they are genuinely unsettled.

The Eno connection is significant. He produced the band’s most important work, The Unforgettable Fire and The Joshua Tree, and co-wrote Achtung Baby. His presence as a collaborator signals something about ambition and willingness to be challenged. Eno does not do comfortable. He does not do stadium singalongs. When U2 brings him in, they are asking to be made uncomfortable.

Both EPs were released alongside digital editions of the band’s fan zine Propaganda, which they have been publishing since 1986. This is a detail that would be charming nostalgia if the actual content weren’t substantial: essays from each band member, a conversation between Bono and Franciscan friar Richard Rohr, photographs from Larry Mullen Jr., song lyrics, memorial writing. It is a fan document, but also something more intimate.

The full album, still untitled, is coming in late 2026. Bono describes it as “noisy, messy, unreasonably colourful” and destined to be played live. He talks about “vivid rock and roll as an act of resistance.” These are bold words from a band that spent years making polished, arena-scale anthems about global consciousness. But the EPs suggest the impulse is real, not promotional.

U2 in 2026 are doing the thing that very few artists who reach their level ever manage: treating their late career as a laboratory rather than a legacy tour. They have the money, the catalog, and the reputation to coast indefinitely. Instead they are releasing EPs on holy days and asking whether faith can survive the internet. Eno is in the room. The questions are real. The album should be interesting.