Take That Announce 'Dreamers,' Their 10th Album, Out November 20

LONDON — Take That do not behave like a band that has anything left to prove — and that, paradoxically, is why they keep proving it. On Thursday, Gary Barlow, Mark Owen and Howard Donald announced Dreamers, their 10th studio album, due November 20 via EMI, dropping the title track the same day. It is the sound of a group 37 years into the job deciding the best use of all that experience is a glittering, disco-shaped party record.

The announcement landed exactly as it should: with the album's title track out now, a full 12-song tracklist revealed, and a press release that said Dreamers is a "sparkly, energetic album laden with pop hits and inspired by disco, house and classic pop." The cover art leans hard into retro Pop Art — bright comic-book colors, the band presented like a splash panel. After the stately, stadium-sized songwriting of their last decade, this is Take That in full celebration mode.

The band's own statement reads like three men genuinely surprised by how good this one feels. "When we were making this album, our 10th as a band, we didn't set out to write something which reflected on our career together," Gary Barlow, Mark Owen and Howard Donald said in a joint press release. "However, in a year which has already been so incredible for us, what transpired when we started to share music and ideas was we had taken the best bits of what we'd learned as Take That and put it into these songs. We're very happy and proud of what we've created and we can't wait for everyone to hear it."

Barlow, never one to undersell a moment, went further on Instagram. The album was, he wrote, "two years in the making" — "It's been a good one. No rush. Lots of quality writing time. A wonderful cast list of amazing producers, writers and musicians. Some collaborations. What more could you ask for? ... Thanks to everyone who's helped us and made it possible. We all can't wait for you to hear it. What a year 2026 has been. So happy we're ending the year looking forward and upwards."

Two years, no rush, quality writing time — that patience shows in the tracklist. Beyond the previously released singles You're A Superstar, Sweet July and Feel My Love with Irish-American musician Michael Patrick Kelly, the record includes Best Heartbreak, Higher, Who Do You Think You Are, Change of Season, My Love Is Yours and Saint. Two tracks have already earned their own mythology: Wonderkids, described as a punchy, tongue-in-cheek commentary on the band's almost four-decade journey from Manchester teenagers to national treasures; and the closer, Masterpiece, a piano-layered ballad co-written with Tom Odell — which is about as "take a breath, this matters" a closing choice as you can make on a disco record.

That is a serious piece of work for a band that could, at this point, phone in a greatest-hits tour and sell out the same stadiums. Consider the arc: formed in Manchester in 1989 as a five-piece — Barlow, Donald, Owen, Jason Orange and a teenage Robbie Williams — they owned the first half of the '90s with Pray, Relight My Fire and Back for Good, split in 1996 a year after Williams left, and then did the thing boy bands aren't supposed to do: reformed in 2006 and got bigger. As a trio, they've stacked chart records that put them on the list of acts with the most UK Number 1 albums. Their 2023 album This Life became their ninth UK No. 1, shifting 116,163 units in its first week.

And then there's the year they've just had. Dreamers caps what even the most cynical observer would call a victory lap: a self-titled Netflix documentary that topped the streamer's charts, and a summer revival of their ambitious 2009 Circus staging — The Circus Live, Summer 2026 — that played 17 stadium shows across the UK and Ireland to more than 700,000 fans. The album announcement feels less like a comeback and more like a band deciding the victory lap should have its own soundtrack.

The disco/house/classic-pop pivot is cannier than it looks. This is not Take That chasing a trend — it's Take That remembering that their entire superpower has always been the euphoric chorus. The press-release description is unusually honest for the genre: "sparkly, energetic," "laden with pop hits." No tortured metaphors about reinvention, no chin-stroking about legacy. Just: we learned how to do this over 10 albums, here are the hits.

And they're backing it with the biggest touring commitment in years. The Dreamers Tour 2027 is their most ambitious European run in ages: 31 shows in 31 cities across 16 countries — Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Norway, Sweden, France, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Denmark, Spain, Italy, Austria and Switzerland — opening June 3 in Switzerland and closing July 23 in Germany. For a band that just played to 700,000 people in one summer, that's not a victory lap. That's a second wind.

Ten albums in, the honest question isn't whether Take That can still do it — 700,000 tickets and a ninth No. 1 answered that. The question is what a band with nothing left to prove chooses to do with its freedom. Dreamers answers with glitter, house beats, a Tom Odell piano ballad for the comedown, and a title that says everything about where their heads are: "looking forward and upwards," as Barlow said. After 37 years, they're still not looking back. Check this week's new album releases, plus Olivia Dean's latest and Lucky Daye's Aloud, for more music coverage.