In 2026, Radiohead is five solo projects wrapped in a shared history. Ed O’Brien has a new album, Blue Morpho, arriving May 22nd. Jonny Greenwood has Ranjha, a collaboration with composer Shye Ben Tzur and The Rajasthan Express, also due in May. Philip Selway is working on his own material. Colin Greenwood is currently on tour with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. And now, confirmed via a stray remark from O’Brien on a podcast, Thom Yorke has a fourth solo album coming later in the year.

The band is not broken up. If anything, they are more active than they have been in years. The 2025 reunion tour, which Radiohead had teased and delayed across most of the post-King of Limbs era, finally happened to enormous critical response. O’Brien called it “my favorite tour we’ve ever done.” They plan to reconvene for another round in 2027. But in the meantime, the five members have scattered in five distinct directions, and following them across the landscape feels like an exercise in understanding what Radiohead actually is when you strip away the band.

Start with O’Brien. His first solo album, Earth, arrived in 2020 and caught most Radiohead fans off-guard with its warmth. It was guitar music in a way that the band had long since moved away from, atmospheric but grounded, emotional without being theatrical. Blue Morpho, its follow-up, has been previewed through a title track that suggests O’Brien is leaning further into that warmer, more spacious territory. He has always been the member most comfortable being simply musical, and his solo work reflects that.

Greenwood is a different story entirely. His work with the London Contemporary Orchestra and his string arrangements for film have made him one of the more sought-after composers working today. Ranjha, the collaboration with Shye Ben Tzur and The Rajasthan Express, is his most explicitly world-music-influenced project yet. The last record in that series, Junun (2015), was compelling and disorienting in equal measure. Over a decade later, the expectation is that this one will push further.

Selway’s solo output has been a quiet revelation. Weatherhouse (2014) and Polaroid (2021) showed a songwriter with a folk and chamber sensibility that sits nowhere near what Radiohead sounds like in full flight. His voice is small and specific in the best sense, and his current work reportedly continues in that vein.

Colin Greenwood in the Cave orbit is its own thing to reckon with. Cave’s touring machine is meticulously arranged and deeply committed, and having a Radiohead bassist in the rhythm section is an upgrade that the Bad Seeds seem to be using rather than treating as a novelty.

Then there is Yorke, who is always the hardest to place. The Eraser was a melancholy synth record that served as a corrective to OK Computer’s legacy. Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes worked with download and BitTorrent distribution in ways that anticipated streaming’s dominance. Anima arrived with a film and a series of political anxieties about the surveillance state. His solo albums always carry a statement beyond the music. Whatever comes later this year, you can count on it meaning something.

What’s remarkable about the current moment is that none of this feels like a band dissolving. The solo projects and the Radiohead reunion exist simultaneously without contradiction, which suggests the five members have figured out something about the long-term sustainability of a creative partnership that many bands never manage. You do not have to give up who you are individually to keep the larger thing alive.

Radiohead in 2026 is five satellites in orbit around a mothership that isn’t going anywhere. Follow the satellites. They’re all doing something worth paying attention to.