The National have announced their first live appearance since 2024, marking an exciting return to the stage for the acclaimed group.
The band is scheduled to perform a unique, one-off concert as part of the AB100 festival in San Sebastian. Titled “The National And Friends,” the event will take place at the Kursaal Donostia on October 18. The lineup features a stellar array of guest performers, including Kevin Morby, Ben Howard, Jon Hopkins, Mina Tindle, Ragnar Kjartansson, Richard Reed Perry (of Arcade Fire), and Anaïs Mitchell, among others.
Tickets are set to go on sale on August 3 at 11:30 am Central European Time (10:30 am BST).
The group’s most recent studio output included the 2023 dual release of ‘The First Two Pages Of Frankenstein‘ and ‘Laugh Track‘. During a 2024 interview with NME, the band described themselves as being in a highly productive “gardening phase” regarding the development of new material.
In the interim, frontman Matt Berninger released his solo album, ‘Get Sunk‘. Berninger recently shared an unconventional aspect of his songwriting process, noting that he wrote much of the lyrics for his second solo project on baseballs to force a more deliberate pace.
“For me, writing on the baseballs is making me a better writer just by physically slowing the writing process down,” he told NME in 2025. “My brain sits on a word just a hair longer when I have to write it on a baseball. My brain considers the word and goes, ‘No, this is a better word. Don’t go left, go backwards’. When you’re writing on a baseball, you have a minute to avoid the cliché.”
He compared the meticulous nature of the task to writing a novel with a single finger, speculating that such discipline might be why authors like Hemingway produced such impactful prose. “Maybe that’s the way Hemingway wrote and why his sentences are so good? Because he just fucking thought about every word,” Berninger added.
Band member Aaron Dessner has remained prolific as a producer, contributing to recent works by Mumford & Sons (‘Prizefighter‘), Gracie Abrams (‘The Secret Of Us‘ and ‘Daughter From Hell‘), Florence + The Machine (‘Everybody Scream‘), and Brandi Carlile (‘Returning To Myself’).
Dessner also recently addressed and denied rumors suggesting that Abrams’ track ‘Death Wish’ was inspired by Taylor Swift, an artist he has also collaborated with.
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