Kneecap, the Belfast-Derry trio, returned in 2026 with a blistering number 1 album ‘FENIAN’ and played their biggest headline show to date at Crystal Palace Park in London, as well as multiple festival headline slots.

How do you respond to a year that saw a lifetime’s worth of chaos explode? Courtroom dramas and blacklisting, media madness and political policing, prime ministers intervening in festival lineups, attempts at censorship and stifling of expression? Kneecap aren’t having any of that. There is finer art to be made. So, how do you respond? As the saying goes: is fearr lúbadh ná briseadh – it’s better to bend than to break.

Masters of rave and rap theatre, FENIAN represents Kneecap’s most sophisticated exploration of language and sounds. What began in 2017 as a DIY project with rudimentary hip-hop beats, has grown into a global movement. With FENIAN, Kneecap reclaim their creative territory developing massively along their own singular trajectory while the headlines were blasting and festival sound systems were blaring.