Today, Holly Humberstone announces her highly anticipated second album Cruel World, to be released on 10 April 2026. One of the defining voices of her generation returns with an album that captures the tension between pain and pleasure, where chaos and acceptance exist side by side. Renowned for her forensic songwriting ability – nominated for an Ivor Novello for her debut EP and winning the BRIT Rising Star in 2022 – Holly has grown into a global force, whose lucid storytelling resonates far beyond her own walls. Entering Cruel World, Holly escapes into a dark fairytale world of her own making, where childhood relics, monsters and memory collide. Today Holly allows us to look through the looking glass with the soaring new single “To Love Somebody”, accompanied by an enchanting video directed by Silken Weinberg (Ethel Cain). Inspired by Victorian theatre, Brothers Grimm and Nosferatu, “To Love Somebody” is a visceral opening statement for the 26-year-old, as the new year begins. Love now, for Holly, is both grounding and destabilising. “The record explores love as beautiful and inherently painful,” she says.
“In To Love Somebody I wanted to capture that contradiction: to love somebody, is to hurt somebody and to lose somebody, well at least you got to love somebody. In order to feel extreme happiness, you have to know extreme sadness. That’s the tension of the record,” says Holly. The past two have been defined by repair, belonging, and rediscovering talismans to her past, moments that were forgotten when she was catapulted into the public sphere at just 20-years-old. Where her top 3 debut album Paint My Bedroom Black was marked by turbulence and longing, Cruel World is anchored in stability and recollection. Visually, Holly has built a world with her sister Eleri and creative director Silken Weinberg, inspired by childhood trinkets unearthed while leaving the Haunted House she grew up in. From ballet shoes, to Alice in Wonderland books, and films like Edward Scissorhands and James and the Giant Peach, sifting through her girlhood belongings reframed the ghosts of her past into something playful and magical.
From winning the BRIT Rising Star in 2022 having only released two EP’s and an Ivor Novello nomination for “Haunted House”, to releasing her top #3 critically acclaimed debut album Paint My Bedroom Black in 2023, Holly has become known for her unflinching honesty and ability to articulate the quiet turbulence of young adulthood. Selling out Brixton Academy and Eventim Apollo, to headline tours in North America, Holly recently joined Sam Fender on his Australian tour in November with a run of headline dates. This February Holly will tour Europe for a run of intimate headline dates, with a UK tour in March and April, culminating at Shepherds Bush on 2 April 2026.
Holly’s story began with Falling Asleep At The Wheel, the breakthrough EP that revealed a young woman translating her haunted childhood home and three-sister household into vivid, unforgettable songs like “Vanilla,” “Overkill” and “Deep End.” The intimacy and precision of her lyrics marked her as a diarist of the small details that make up big emotions. That voice quickly carried her from her gothic family home to the international stage: performing “London Is Lonely” live to millions at the BRIT Awards in 2022, supporting Olivia Rodrigo and Girl in Red across North America, and releasing her acclaimed debut album Paint My Bedroom Black in 2023, written partly in hotel rooms while living the dream she had imagined as a girl.
Cruel World was written with a new discipline through daily studio sessions with collaborator Rob Milton and draws deeply on love – romantic, platonic, and feminine. Raised among strong women, Holly speaks to the way girls are taught to see one another as competition, unlearning that instinct and reclaiming solidarity as survival. Gothic love songs on the record like “Die Happy”, which was BBC Radio 1’s Hottest Record in November, explore devotion, danger and desire, pulling from fairytales, Dracula and the ache of seasons changing.
INTERNATIONAL TOUR DATES
● 09 February 2026 — AB Club, Brussels, BE
● 10 February 2026 — Kulturkirche Köln, Cologne, DE
● 11 February 2026 — Peter Edel, Berlin, DE SOLD OUT
● 13 February 2026 — Nalen, Stockholm, SE SOLD OUT
● 14 February 2026 — Lille (Little) Vega, Copenhagen, DK SOLD OUT
● 16 February 2026 — Zonnehuis, Amsterdam, NL
● 17 February 2026 — Les Étoiles, Paris, FR
● 29 March 2026 — Old Fruit Market, Glasgow, UK
● 30 March 2026 — New Century Hall, Manchester, UK SOLD OUT
● 01 April 2026 — Electric, Bristol, UK SOLD OUT
● 02 April 2026 — Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London, UK SOLD OUT
● 12 April 12, 2026 — Coachella, California
● 07 June 2026 — Governors Ball, New York City