You May Offend finds The Proclaimers still unbowed

Their thirteenth album is out, the twins having taken free speech and cancellation culture head-on, while a sold-out Swedish mini-tour leaves British dates still open.

The Proclaimers released their thirteenth studio album, You May Offend, in mid-September 2026. The title track addresses free speech and cancellation culture, subjects Charlie and Craig Reid discussed in interviews around the launch.

Later that month the Scottish duo began a short, sold-out tour of Sweden. Shows in Lund and Gothenburg on 27 September formed part of it, and the band confirmed the tour dates and the early reception on their official site. No further UK dates have been announced.

From Leith to the long haul

Craig and Charlie Reid formed The Proclaimers in 1983. They broke through with the 1987 single "Letter from America", which reached No. 3 in the United Kingdom, and followed it with the 1988 single "I'm Gonna Be", which topped the charts in Australia, Iceland and New Zealand. Their biggest album remains Sunshine on Leith (1988), certified multi-Platinum in Australia and Canada and a seller of more than two million copies worldwide, including around 700,000 in the United States. Across their catalogue the duo have sold over five million albums.

The studio run after that first surge has been deliberate rather than frantic. Hit the Highway arrived in 1994. Later albums — Like Comedy in 2012, Let's Hear It for the Dogs in 2015, Angry Cyclist in 2018 and Dentures Out in 2022 — kept the brothers on the road and in the racks without chasing fashion. Live documents such as The Rockfield Acoustic Session and Live at the Belly Up underlined how central the stage has remained to the project. You May Offend is the next full studio statement after Dentures Out, four years on, and it lands as the work of a duo who still treat the album as the place to plant an argument.

The stakes on the new record

Putting free speech and cancellation culture on the title track is a clear choice. The Reid brothers discussed the record and those views in interviews that accompanied the release. Reviews of You May Offend appeared through the second half of September, and the band has said the reception sits comfortably alongside the response from the Swedish dates.

For listeners who have followed the band since the late 1980s, continuity is the point. The close harmonies, the unsoftened Scottish accent and a writing style that prefers plain statement to soft metaphor are their hallmarks. A sold-out run in Sweden, with the Lund and Gothenburg gigs already behind them, shows the live pull is intact. What remains open is the British and Irish calendar. Nothing further has been set out. Until it is, You May Offend stands as the newest chapter: a thirteenth album from a pair who formed in 1983 and have never stopped testing what they want to say out loud.