Jake Bugg brings Alamo to UK shops this November

Jake Bugg will mark the release of his seventh studio album, Alamo, with a run of intimate in-store performances and launch events across the UK in November 2026. The record arrives on 13 November via Thirty Tigers and the dates combine short acoustic sets with question-and-answer sessions and signings around the street date, keeping the new songs' first public outings deliberately low-key.

Confirmed stops include Circuit Kingston on 8 November and Rough Trade Nottingham on 12 and 13 November, with further shop appearances lined up in the same window. For a songwriter who emerged from Nottingham and has kept the city at the centre of his story, the Rough Trade nights carry particular weight: the new material will be heard first in the rooms that stocked the early records, before the larger halls take over.

From the number-one debut to Alamo

Bugg’s self-titled debut reached number one on the UK Albums Chart on its release in October 2012. Several of its songs were co-written with Iain Archer, and the record fixed him as a young writer steeped in folk, skiffle and the British guitar tradition. Shangri La followed in November 2013. On My One, largely self-produced, arrived in June 2016. Hearts That Strain, a largely acoustic effort produced by Dan Auerbach, was released in September 2017. After a four-year gap he moved towards a brighter, more pop-influenced sound on Saturday Night, Sunday Morning in August 2021, then issued A Modern Day Distraction in 2024. A single, Never Said Goodbye, appeared in 2025.

Alamo is framed as his most personal and heartfelt album to date and as a return to folk-leaning roots. Production is shared by Jimmy Hogarth and Steve McEwan. That framing places the record closer in spirit to the debut and to Hearts That Strain than to the pop turn of 2021: clearer songcraft, smaller gestures, less gloss. The in-store format matches the claim. These are not festival warm-ups; they are rooms in which the writing can be heard at speaking volume and the singer can answer for it.

Fourteen years on from the chart-topping first album, his body of work already spans six studio records before this one, each testing a different production hand and a different room size. Listeners who followed that path — from the early folk charge through the Auerbach sessions and the later pop experiments — will recognise the pattern. Alamo stakes a fresh claim on intimacy. The gigs announced this week are the first test of whether that claim holds when the songs leave the studio.

From the shops to the Concert Hall

The November shop run is only the opening move. Hometown shows are planned for Nottingham Royal Concert Hall in February 2027 as part of a wider stripped-back tour. The sequence is deliberate: Alamo in the shops first, heard close-up with Q&As and signings, then a quieter stage run that keeps the focus on voice and guitar rather than full-band volume.

Exact ticket arrangements and set formats for each store event are up to the individual shops as the dates draw nearer. What is already clear is the shape of the season ahead — a seventh album, a brief run of launch rooms in November, and Nottingham again in the early months of 2027. Full routing beyond the in-stores and those hometown nights has yet to be set out in full, but the centre of gravity is plain: the record first, then the songs in the rooms that suit them.

For an artist whose catalogue has moved between chart stages and smaller acoustic settings, the choice of format this time is part of the statement. Alamo arrives with the claim of a return to roots; the dates that surround it put that claim in front of audiences before the year is out, and bring it home to Nottingham early in 2027.