Tears for Fears' first live album, forty years on

Tears for Fears release their first official live album on 25 October 2026. *Songs For A Nervous Planet* arrives through Concord Music as a double set drawn from the Tipping Point Tour, with four new studio recordings.

The new tracks are Say Goodbye To Mum And Dad, Emily Said, Astronaut and The Girl That I Call Home. A video for the last song has already been shared. Roland Orzabal described the project as "an album forty years in the making". It will be issued as a two-LP set, a deluxe triple vinyl edition, on CD and digitally.

Alongside the record comes a companion concert film, *Tears For Fears Live (A Tipping Point Film)*. Shot at the FirstBank Amphitheater in Franklin, Tennessee, the film is set to premiere in more than 1,100 cinemas worldwide on 24 and 26 October 2026. Cinema tickets go on sale on 19 September.

From Bath to the big chair

Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal formed Tears for Fears in Bath in 1981, after their earlier group Graduate ended. The duo became one of the defining acts of the mid-1980s new wave and synthesiser era, and part of the Second British Invasion that carried UK pop and rock deep into international charts.

Their debut album, *The Hurting*, arrived in 1983. *Songs from the Big Chair* followed in 1985 and sealed their global reach with a run of singles that still define the band for many listeners. *The Seeds of Love* came in 1989, denser and more expansive, before *Elemental* in 1993. Across that stretch the pair built a catalogue that has kept filling venues for decades — yet until this announcement they had never put out an official live album.

That absence is part of what gives the October release its weight. A group with this history may spend years on the road without ever committing a full live document to the catalogue; when one finally appears, it marks a line under the years of touring that made it possible. Orzabal’s phrase — forty years in the making — points less at delay than at the span of work now being drawn together.

Tour tapes and new songs

*Songs For A Nervous Planet* is not a pure archive set. The live material from the Tipping Point Tour forms the core of the double album, but the four fresh studio tracks sit beside it rather than as a separate release. That mix matters for listeners who already know the older songs cold: the new writing keeps the release tied to the band as they are now, not only to a tour already played.

The cinema dates land on the same weekend as the album. Audiences will be able to take the record home on 25 October and, on 24 or 26 October, see the filmed Franklin show on a big screen. The scale of the roll-out — more than a thousand cinemas — treats the concert film as a proper companion piece, not a side extra.

What further live work may follow has not been announced. For now the story is the one already set: a first official live album after more than four decades, four new studio songs, a wide cinema premiere, and a release date locked for late October. Formats are confirmed across vinyl, CD and digital; the single video is already out; tickets for the film go on sale on 19 September. After a career that began in Bath and ran through some of the biggest records of the 1980s, Tears for Fears finally have a live album of their own.