Tuomas Holopainen says he has six songs written for Nightwish‘s eleventh album and 2027 is reserved.
Tuomas Holopainen has said work on the next Nightwish record is further along than anything the band have said publicly, telling Metal Hammer that six songs are finished and that the group have already blocked out time next year.
“I feel more inspired than ever — proof of that is that I’ve already got six new Nightwish songs done,” the 49-year-old said. “Every time I sit in front of my keyboard, I’m, like, ‘Ah, yeah, this is great! Just wait till everyone hears this.’ It’s exhilarating.”
Holopainen said the band have “reserved things” for 2027, which reads as booked studio time, and was clear about the order in which things will happen.
“Next year is too early to be going back on tour. The year after, possibly? I want to do another album before any live shows, and that’s definitely happening. We’ve already reserved things for that next year,” he revealed.
Read straightforwardly, that puts an album in 2027 and a return to the stage no sooner than 2028, four years after the band last played live.
The timing is awkward. Floor Jansen told Thomas Vogel of Germany’s Sonic Seducer recently that nothing at all was in the diary.
“ No, there’s nothing planned. That is the thing with Nightwish — we’re on a temporary hold. But there’s no communication about when something’s gonna happen,” she said at the time.
Holopainen told a Finnish newspaper five months ago that he was working on two albums, without saying whether either was for the band.
Nightwish announced in 2023 that they were stepping away from live work, and did not tour Yesterwynde, which arrived on 20 September 2024 through Nuclear Blast. Holopainen produced it, as he has every Nightwish record.
Troy Donockley explained the reasoning to “Rock Hard Greece” shortly after that album came out.
“Well, I was part of the decision, as we all were. We weren’t forced into the conclusion, but we were pointed in the direction of it quite early on, even before the pandemic. We realized that we were in danger of burning out of doing too much. So we made the decision, and extraordinarily, the decision to have this hiatus, this time off, is for all of us. It has no time limit. We have absolutely no plans at all for when we will bring the band out again to play live,” he said at the time.
Holopainen has not been idle. Auri, the project he runs with his wife Johanna Kurkela and Donockley, released its third album, III – Candles & Beginnings, in August 2025.
Jansen, meanwhile, announced her own second solo record this week. Hytress arrives on 15 January 2027 through REVAMP Music and Warner Music, with a European and South American tour to follow.
