Six years is a long time in music. Long enough for entire careers to begin and end. Long enough for a band’s cultural legacy to calcify into nostalgia or sharpen into something newly relevant. For The Strokes, the six years since The New Abnormal have done the latter. The New York band that defined a generation of indie rock is back — with an album produced by Rick Rubin, a world tour covering four continents, and a rollout that played out in real time at Coachella’s main stage.
The Strokes have announced a world tour for 2026 coinciding with the release of their upcoming album Reality Awaits, their first new work since The New Abnormal in 2020; the record is due June 26 via Cult Records/RCA Records.
The Album: Rick Rubin, Costa Rica, and Six Years of Distance
The details around the making of Reality Awaits are the kind that generate anticipation before a single note is heard. The band recorded the new album in Costa Rica with famed producer Rick Rubin, who described the sessions in 2022: “We rented this house up on the top of a mountain and set the band up outside. So they’re playing… It’s like they’re doing a concert for the ocean, on the top of a mountain. It was incredible. And we did that every day, playing out in the open, and they didn’t want to leave. It was, like, the best experience.”
Rick Rubin’s involvement changes the conversation around this record before it arrives. His discography spans decades and genres, but his work with guitar-driven rock acts — stripping arrangements down to their essential bones, creating space for a band’s identity to breathe — is what makes the pairing with The Strokes interesting. Julian Casablancas and company have never lacked confidence or personality; what Rubin typically provides is clarity. A record made outdoors on a Costa Rican mountaintop, finished across multiple international locations, sounds like one that wanted to exist on its own terms.
Guitarist Nick Hammond Jr. has described the album as “looser” than previous work and the experience of making it as “magical.” For a band whose earlier records were defined by a specific kind of controlled tension — the tightly wound energy of Is This It and Room on Fire — “looser” is a notable word. Reality Awaits may be The Strokes at their most relaxed, which could mean their most honest.
The first single, “Going Shopping,” is available now and made its live debut during the band’s Coachella set — giving fans their first real taste of what the new era sounds like before the album rollout formally began.
The Rollout: Coachella to Pre-Sale in One Week
The sequencing of this announcement is a case study in how a legacy act builds a modern album cycle. Fresh off the Strokes’ main stage set at Coachella, the band announced a summer tour in support of their upcoming album Reality Awaits; the trek revolves around previously announced gigs at festivals like Outside Lands, Sea.Hear.Now, Shaky Knees, and Bonnaroo, where the Reality Awaits World Tour will begin on June 12.
The strategic logic is visible. Coachella is the largest annual live music platform in the United States, broadcast globally and followed by millions of people who never attend. Performing a new single there — and letting audience reaction generate organic conversation — before announcing an album and tour is a way of letting the music build the story rather than the press release. By the time the formal announcement landed, “Going Shopping” had already been heard by tens of thousands of people in real time, with footage circulating widely.
Artist presales began April 15; general on-sale opens April 17 via Ticketmaster. Further information and fan registration is available on thestrokes.com.
The Tour: Arenas, Red Rocks, and a Support Lineup Worth Noting
The Reality Awaits global tour runs June 12 through October 28, with stops including two nights at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, London’s The O2, Toronto’s RBC Amphitheatre, Paris’ Accor Arena, and Amsterdam’s Ziggo Dome; support acts include Thundercat, Cage the Elephant, Hamilton Leithauser, Fat White Family, Alex Cameron, and ÖLÜM on select dates.
The scale of this routing is a significant step up from the festival circuit The Strokes have occupied comfortably for years. Arenas in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Toronto sit alongside two-night Red Rocks runs and major European amphitheaters — a slate that suggests the band and their team believe this album cycle has arena-level demand behind it. The support lineup across various legs also tells a story: Thundercat and Cage the Elephant bring distinct audiences, while Hamilton Leithauser and Fat White Family signal that the indie credibility the band built over two decades remains intact and intentional.
The Strokes will return to Coachella’s main stage for Weekend Two before kicking off the formal tour run at Bonnaroo in June — keeping festival presence active through the album’s June 26 release date and into the tour’s first weeks.
What This Means for Indie Rock in 2026
The Strokes’ return lands in a moment when the 2000s indie rock revival is not just a nostalgic footnote. The artists that generation influenced — and the fans who came of age with those records — are now the primary drivers of streaming numbers, festival attendance, and album sales in the rock space. Reality Awaits arriving six years after The New Abnormal, produced by Rick Rubin with full arena touring behind it, is a statement that The Strokes are not resting on their catalog.
Whether the album delivers on the weight of the moment is a question June 26 will answer. What is already clear is that the industry is paying attention — and that the rollout from Coachella main stage to global presale in under a week is exactly how a band rebuilds momentum in 2026.
Reality Awaits is out June 26 via Cult Records/RCA Records. General on-sale begins April 17.
