As Mumford & Sons announce their return to BST Hyde Park for 2026, the band caught up with NME to tell us about plans for the huge show and finding themselves “in their prime” on new album ‘Prizefighter’. Check out our full interview and ticket details below.
Joining previously announced headliners Lewis Capaldi, Pitbull and Maroon 5, the alt-folk veterans will take to the Great Oak Stage at BST Hyde Park on Saturday July 4, with support from The War On Drugs and a full line-up to be announced. They’ll be playing in support of their sixth studio album ‘Prizefighter‘ – which is due on Friday February 13, 2026 and features Hozier, Gracie Abrams, Chris Stapleton and Gigi Perez.
This will mark a decade since the band last headlined BST Hyde Park back in 2016. “It was one of my favourite shows ever, actually,” Marcus Mumford recalled to NME. “We’ve been gagging to do it again when the time was right, and now’s the time. Playing that place in our home town – it doesn’t get much better than that.
“We’re enjoying ourselves as a band more than we ever have. We have this sense of joy of being back. We’re just enjoying it. It feels like a total pleasure at the moment and we have a total depth of gratitude for it. We just finished this European tour, which brings quite a big year to an end. We’ll end up playing about 100 shows, which is quite like the old days for us. I’m feeling more fired up than I have for a while.”
Mumford added: “Next year is going to be a busy year for us, and we’ve made this record that we’re super proud of in ‘Prizefighter’. We’re excited to show it to people, so next year just feels like the culmination of a couple of years work for us. It’s been really prolific and fun again.”
Check out our full interview with Mumford and keyboardist Ben Lovett below, where they told NME about upping their game, their “honest” new album, working with The National’s Aaron Dessner, and being “all fired up” for the future.
NME: Hello, Mumford & Sons! How do you mentally prepare for playing to 65,000 people at Hyde Park? How do you reach the people at the back?
Ben Lovett: “We’ve had an interesting cadence with our statement London shows as a band. You’ll remember than in the aftermath of the London Olympics there was the Queen Elizabeth Park where we turfed what was basically a car park and played to 65,000 people there. We were still kids at that point and couldn’t quite wrap our heads around that. We almost didn’t want to believe it was happening. Not long after that we headlined Glastonbury 2023, then Hyde Park a few years later was the biggest show yet. It was an incredible feeling of of communal shared experience.
“That’s something we love as music fans. I’ve been increasingly reminding people that when you’re in a band, you’re a music fan first and foremost. That’s how you get into it. Marcus and I have spent many years, arms in the air, singing along to some of our favourite artists. That’s what we want to provide: that moment in the centre of London with nostalgia from 15 years ago along with some of the new songs from ‘Prizefighter’. We want it to be the euphoria that we enjoy when we go to Hyde Park and Glastonbury.”
Will you be rinsing your contact lists for special guests?
Marcus Mumford: “We’re always rinsing our contact list! What are you talking about?”
You’ve got The War On Drugs supporting you. That must make you up your game?
Mumford: “They haven’t played in London for a long time. They’ve inspired so many records and they are a generation-defining band. I’ve been down the wormhole watching their live performances recently. We last played with them at a festival in Montreal a couple of years ago. They were on amazing form. I was gutted that I missed that tour they did with Lucius and The National. Yeah man, I’m going to be ecstatic to watch that.”
Is there anything else you can tell us about the line-up?
Mumford: “Not at the moment, because it’s a tightly-held secret – but Hyde Park are great because they always work with us on the line-up. Those are some of the most fun and creative conversations outside of making a record. It’s sometimes brand new music or us introducing artists to one another. Putting these line-ups together is often how we discover new music. Then there are some of our favourite artists who join us, like The War On Drugs.”
Tell us about ‘Prizefighter’ – where does it take the Mumford sound following on ‘Rushmere’?
Mumford: “I think it elevates it. All these things are subjective, we’re probably the worst judges of this and most artists would say this about their most recent work, but I feel like we’re in our prime and that we’re writing the best songs we’ve ever written. I don’t say that about every record, and I really feel strongly about this one. ‘Rushmere’ was super helpful for us getting back in a room with Dave Cobb [producer] really holding out feet to the fire about who we are as artists and what we want to do.
“We spent time with Pharrell Williams who really unlocked me as a writer; he really picked my lock and opened me up. Then it was just the perfect timing to walk into a room where Aaron Dessner just happened to be next door. We started showing each other demos we’d been working on, and that started while we were mixing ‘Rushmere’. Suddenly we were starting another record and the songs just poured out in a way that they haven’t since the first record. There was just this spirit of freedom, creativity, curiosity and trust amongst the three of us with Aaron as our producer.”
That must have made for quite the breeding ground for songs?
Marcus: “That provided really fertile ground for songs to just appear – and they really did just appear. In just 10 days, we’d written more songs than we had in the last seven years combined. We didn’t overthinking it, it was a really instinctive writing and recording process. There weren’t loads of takes, there weren’t thousands of rewrites. We just moved quite quickly, but in a way that we just trusted the process with Aaron. He helped us with the demos for the third record [‘Wilder Mind’, 2015] and he’s been a friend and supporter of ours for a long time. It just felt right.”
Lovett: “We’ve rediscovered some of that naivety and allure that artists have on their debut record where it’s always exciting to hear something brand new from someone. To rediscover that naivety and lack of self-awareness is quite a true and fortunate place to be in. That a lack of concern for where it places us and what the sound of it is, that’s good”
Was it the same for the lyrics?
Mumford: “For the first time in a while, I was writing a lyric and not thinking about how anyone would respond to it. I was only thinking about how it felt to me, which is why it was most similar to the first record. On the first record, you don’t imagine a big audience because you haven’t played the big shows, you haven’t had the feedback, you haven’t had the NME review. This time, we were making it for ourselves first and foremost behind closed doors and it felt amazing.”
What was inspiring you lyrically this time around? What were you mining?
Mumford: “I just feel like it’s deeply honest and has everything that I want to say on it. I’d say it’s direct, open and free.”
We’ve heard the single ‘Rubber Band Man’ featuring Hozier. What brought you guys together and why on that song?
Mumford: “We’ve been friends with Andrew for a long time. It goes back a really long time: about 12 years. We’ve played with him a bunch and he’s exactly like you’d imagine him to be: a deeply thoughtful, soulful artist. We sent him the whole record when we had it in semi-demo form and he picked ‘Rubber Band Man’ as something he’d love to sing. It just jumped out to him. We’ve had these points of connection over the years and this felt like the right time to collaborate on record.
“We’ve collaborated with people a lot on stage, but we’ve never had that many collaborations on our albums. It was fun opening the doors because it’s reflective of the spirit of our band that we’ve had since we started with that Laura Marling, Noah & The Whale, JJ Pinestone crowd. There were always 12 of us on stage, even before we formed the band! It’s always been a very collaborative enterprise, we’ve never represented that on record before and we just felt like now was the time.”
And so what made you chose Gracie Abrams, Gigi Perez and Chris Stapleton as rare collaborators on this album?
Mumford: “It was all fandom, really, and relational. We all talked before we jumped in. Gracie, I’ve been following since the very beginning. She was a real cheerleader for this record in particular. She was excited for Aaron and us to get together as she’s spent a lot of time in the studio with him. From day one of making ‘Prizefighter’, she was like our agony aunt. She’s got deep wisdom, she’s a really interesting artist and she’s a real cheerleader, which was a cool energy to have. She was right there from the beginning of the process so it felt natural to ask her to sing on it. And man, she just blew us away with what she did on ‘Badlands’.
“Stapleton is like my favourite vocalist in the world right now. We called him and talked about music, family, touring and writing. He smashed out ‘Here’ in just the way that I hoped and dreamed that he would. That song is the only song I sent him, I said: ‘This song is our Brokeback moment, dude!’”
“We’ve toured with Gigi and been fans of hers from the very beginning as well. She’s had a wonderful time out on the road with Hozier this year. We played a show in New York where she came out with us and she was great.”
“Then in the background, Justin Vernon and Brandi Carlile were writing, Finneas helped with one of the songs. It was a team effort.”
You recently said “I hope and believe and we’re in the beginning of something we don’t want to let up on”. Does this mean you’re still writing and we can expect more new music really soon?
Mumford: “Yes, absolutely. This week I’ve really felt the urge to write songs again. We don’t want to stop now. Noel Gallagher is good on this stuff. He said, ‘If you’re a songwriter and you’re not writing songs then what the fuck are you doing with your time?’ Touring doesn’t count as time off in his book.
“I did a couple of songs with Maisie Peters that I found really fun. ‘Say My Name In Your Sleep’ just came out. It was just about finding people that inspire you to write more and surrounding yourself with them. People like Aaron do that really well, Justin does that too. They don’t have be musicians, really; just creative people that inspire you to make more shit.”
Thank you, Mumford & Sons. Anything you’d like to add?
Mumford: “I would like to thank NME for introducing me to the band Divorce. They’ve just became one of my favourite bands in the world. I’m fucking obsessed with that band. We invited them out on tour with us. I saw them on an NME cover. I’d never heard of them but now we’re obsessed with them. They’re fucking incredible and more people should hear them.”
American Express presents BST Hyde Park with Mumford & Sons and The War On Drugs on Saturday July 4. Tickets are on sale Thursday December 4 at 10am and will be available here.
Mumford & Sons release ‘Prizefighter’ on Friday February 13, 2026.
The post Mumford & Sons tell us about their 2026 BST Hyde Park show and new album ‘Prizefighter’: “We’re all fired up” appeared first on NME.