New Holiday Music for 2026

Nobody announces a Christmas album in July. What happens instead is smaller and stranger: a musician mentions in passing, mid-interview, that they've been in the studio working on something seasonal, or a tour appears with a suspiciously specific November-to-December window and no album to go with it yet. By now many of those fragments have turned into titles and release dates. Here's every confirmed Christmas album and release date for 2026 so far, updated as it comes in.

Alanis Morissette – Good Weather for Immaculate Conception

Morissette announced her first-ever full holiday album on October 9, arriving November 6 through Epiphany Music/Virgin Music. It gathers the Christmas covers she's been releasing one at a time since 2020, "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)," "Little Drummer Boy," "Last Christmas," and "O Holy Night," alongside two new originals, "To an Empath at Christmas Time" and "Christmas on the Dancefloor." The fourteen tracks carry a long guest list too: Brandi Carlile and Steve Martin join her on the lead single, "Beautiful Star of Bethlehem," with Amythyst Kiah, Joy Oladokun, the trans choir Trans Voices, and Martin Short elsewhere. It's the record she described on Call Her Daddy as growing almost by accident, one new song each Christmas until there were enough to make an album.

Sufjan Stevens – Worst Christmas Ever!

Stevens announced Worst Christmas Ever!, a sixteen-track collection pulling from his two box sets, Songs for Christmas and Silver & Gold, more than a hundred Christmas recordings he's made since 2001, when he started them as gifts for friends. Only one song is new, "On This Christmas (It Only Gets Better)," tucked in among longtime favorites like "Sister Winter" and the title track itself. As Stevens put it a few years back, "There are no rules and regulations when it comes to Christmas culture." It arrives November 6 through Asthmatic Kitty.

Pentatonix – Christmas in the City (Deluxe)

On August 6, the group confirmed Christmas in the City (Deluxe), an expanded edition of last year's New York-themed holiday album, arriving October 30 with three new songs and seven live versions recorded on last year's tour. The original record built its whole concept around a New York backdrop and folded a real story into its centerpiece single, "Bah Humbug," a theatrical retelling of "A Christmas Carol" with each member of the group cast as a character. This deluxe edition leans into that same world rather than starting fresh, adding onto something that already had its own story built in. The new single, "Get Happy / Happy Days Are Here Again," is already out, and the album is already available to pre-order.

Chris Tomlin – Good News of Great Joy (Christmas Songs of Worship)

Tomlin's fourth full-length Christmas album arrives November 6, eleven tracks built around the announcement the angels made to the shepherds on the first Christmas night. The lead single, "It's Christmas Time Again," is out now. It isn't the kind of worship song he'd normally write, and he called it "a bit out of the box for me," an attempt to capture the warm nostalgia of spending the season with the people you love. He says it's the song that sparked the rest of the album. Also new is "The Manger to the Cross," alongside a reimagined "Joy to the World (Unspeakable Joy)" and the Dove Award-nominated "Holy Forever (Christmas)."

The album shares its title with a children's picture book Tomlin wrote, out November 10 and illustrated by Scott Ligertwood. His Good News of Great Joy tour opens November 30 at the Alabama Theatre in Birmingham, a night added after the December 1 show there sold out.

Hilary Duff – Holiday Things

Duff's new five-track EP, Holiday Things, came out October 23, twenty-four years after her first Christmas album, Santa Claus Lane. She teased it a week earlier by posting that album's cover on its anniversary and asking fans, "Let's do it again this year?" Three originals, "I Guess It's Christmas," "All You Want for Christmas Is Me," and "I Want (A Few Small Things)," sit alongside "Last Christmas (Mine)," a re-recording of the Wham! cover from Santa Claus Lane, and a closing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." The "(Mine)" tag carries over from the re-recorded hits EP she released earlier this year, and the EP follows her February album luck... or something, her first full-length in over a decade.

Ava Max

In a Rolling Stone interview at FIFA House during World Cup Finals Week, Max mentioned she's working on a Christmas album that will apparently include "a ton of features." That was essentially the whole announcement, no title, no lead single, no window. She did confirm a Christmas film with Netflix, her acting debut, landing in the same general stretch of the calendar.

Il Volo – Our Christmas

The Italian trio announced their new orchestral holiday album at a live concert event in Mantua, arriving November 6 through Epic Records/Sony Music Italy. All twelve tracks are classics, "Adeste Fideles," "White Christmas," two versions of "Ave Maria," no new originals, built instead around a full symphonic arrangement. A December tour across five Italian cities, Christmas Nights, carries the same repertoire to the stage.

Debbie Gibson – Winterlicious D'Luxe

Gibson has expanded her 2022 debut holiday album with six brand new originals, out digitally since October 22, with a double vinyl edition due November 6. The lead single is "Lit Up!," a lush big band-style song about holiday love, and the new tracks also include "El Regalo," her first Spanish-language release, and "Out of the Blue Christmas," which mashes up her own hit "Out of the Blue" with the Elvis Presley favorite "Blue Christmas." She's tied the release to a Las Vegas residency at The STRAT running December 17 through 20. "Winterlicious D'Luxe is something I've been quietly working on throughout the year as both a songwriter and artist," she said announcing it. "I am so ready to put my stamp on all things holiday music and live shows this year!"

Voices Of The Gilded Age: The Christmas Album

The ensemble cast of HBO's The Gilded Age lends their vocals to a proper cast-recording-style holiday album, arriving November 6 via Concord Theatricals Recordings. Fifteen tracks pull together Broadway heavyweights including Audra McDonald, Christine Baranski, Kelli O'Hara, Donna Murphy, and Carrie Coon, among them a trio performance of Sondheim's "I Remember," a duet of "O Holy Night," and a three-part reading of "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" running through the record. The lead single, "The World Needs Some Christmas," sung by Ben Ahlers, is out now. Producer Desmond Child has said he's been waiting his whole life to make a record like this one.

Clay Walker – A Clay Walker Family Christmas

Walker's new album arrives November 6 on CD, cream-colored vinyl, and digitally through Maven Records, a true family project featuring his wife and five kids. Several tracks are sung individually by his children, Will, Mary-Elizabeth, and Eli each take a song, before the whole family joins together on the closer, "O Little Town of Bethlehem." "What's better than doing a Christmas record?" Walker said, announcing it. "Recording it with your family!" It's his second Christmas album, after a solo one back in 2002. A nine-city family tour follows, kicking off November 27 in Warren, Ohio.

Cheyenne Grace – It's Christmas Again

Grace is following her 2024 debut, Home for Christmas, with a new seven-track project. It's Christmas Again arrives Wednesday, November 4, with its cover art and tracklist now confirmed. That first album, recorded with a Czech symphony orchestra, climbed to the top of the iTunes holiday chart the week it came out.

Ashley Cooke – wrapped

Cooke's first-ever Christmas EP, wrapped, arrives November 6 through Big Loud Records/Back Blocks Music, and the title track has been out since October 16. It's one of two new originals, a love song she co-wrote with Lauren Hungate, Jimmy Robbins, Alysa Vanderheym, and Ben Williams about a snowed-in Christmas spent with someone who makes everything else disappear. The other original, "Secret Santa," opens the five-song set, followed by her takes on "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and "Jingle Bell Rock," plus "Silent Night (With the Cooke Family)," which brings several of her relatives in on vocals. The release lands in the middle of her 31-date Baby Blues World Tour, which runs through a February 25 show at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium.

David Archuleta – Warm Me Up

Archuleta's tour announcement was followed, by September, with the full picture. The album has a name, Warm Me Up, matching the tour, and it came out October 30. It's a twelve-track set mixing new material with classics like "Let It Snow" and "Grown-Up Christmas List," plus "Nochebuena," a nod to his own heritage, and "Wish at the Top of My List," a duet with fellow American Idol alum Jordin Sparks. It's his third full Christmas album, following Christmas from the Heart in 2009 and Winter in the Air in 2018, plus last year's My Only Wish EP. Three albums in, this is starting to look less like a seasonal side project and more like part of who he is as an artist.

Kat Edmonson – Have Your Merry Christmas With Me

Edmonson's news came fully formed too. Her new album, Have Your Merry Christmas With Me, lands November 6, the same day as Sufjan Stevens, alongside a full US tour of the same name starting the day after Thanksgiving. Two originals, the title track and "Hush! There's a Falling Snow," sit next to jazz and traditional-pop reworkings of standards like "Jingle Bells" and "Santa Baby," plus more unexpected picks, Nancy Wilson's "That's What I Want for Christmas," the Andrews Sisters' "I'd Like to Hitch a Ride with Santa Claus," and a moody take on Wham!'s "Last Christmas." The lead single, "It's Snowing," reworks the Irma Thomas classic "It's Raining." Edmonson has said the record was built around "a healthy dose of nostalgia," alongside the loss and hope she says come with the season.

Steven Page – Steven's Greetings

The Barenaked Ladies co-founder's new album, Steven's Greetings, is coming this fall, and it's a personal one. Alongside new originals and the expected carols, he's including Christmas songs he wrote years ago during his time in the band, some never released. Barenaked Ladies did put out a Christmas album back in 2004, and Page has said making it wasn't really his idea at the time. Two decades later, this is the one he actually wanted to make, on his own schedule, backed by his own trio, a rare case of an artist getting to make peace with an old idea in public.

Dustin Kensrue – That Spirit of Christmas

The Thrice frontman's new solo holiday album arrives October 23, ten tracks mixing standards like "White Christmas" and "My Favorite Things" with one new original, "Joy Lives Here," plus a reworked version of his own 2008 track, "This Good Night Is Still Everywhere." The new song actually started as spec writing for the Hallmark Channel, which passed on it, Kensrue kept going anyway, tying the song instead to the real feeling of Christmas at his own home. It's his second full Christmas record, following that self-released 2008 one.

John Tesh – Epic Christmas

Tesh's new holiday recording, released October 16, pairs his rock-jazz band with a 60-piece orchestra and arranger Tim Heintz, working through classics like "Carol of the Bells" and "Angels We Have Heard on High." The idea traces back to an unlikely source, hearing his own "Roundball Rock," the NBA on NBC theme he wrote decades ago, reimagined by a full orchestra. That experience is what made him want to bring the same scale to Christmas standards, adding in some of his favorite vintage 1980s synthesizers along the way.

Jon Schmidt & Steven Sharp Nelson – The Holiday Sessions

The Piano Guys' pianist and cellist team up on a new holiday collection due November 13, according to a retailer's pre-order listing. The ten-track set pairs carols like "Wexford Carol," "Still, Still, Still," and "Silent Night Lullaby" with more inventive titles, among them "North Pole Express (Ding Dong Merrily on High)" and "Pachelbel Meets U2."

LoCash

The country duo confirmed a six-song Christmas album on the radio show Backstage Country, three originals and two traditional songs, plus one more track rounding it out. No title yet. The project centers on giving new life to "Snow Angel," a song they put out too late last year to really land. As Preston Brust put it, fans have been asking them to make a Christmas record for years, and this was finally the year they decided to do it.

Shaun Cassidy

Cassidy announced his 2026 UNWRAPPED tour for this November and December, leading with a stage rather than an album. The music itself is almost a footnote in his own announcement, a single line about being in the studio writing new Christmas songs, no title, no date. A tour built around new material is still a real commitment, though, the songs have to exist by the time the first show happens.

Victor Manuelle – La Parranda Es Nuestra

The salsa legend's new holiday album, due October 23 according to a Target pre-order listing, brings together a roster of fellow genre icons, Gilberto Santa Rosa, Elvis Crespo, Tito Nieves, José Alberto "El Canario," and others, each credited on the cover art. The title reads like a callback to his 2007 Christmas album, built around a single called "Yo Traigo la Parranda," "I bring the parranda." Nearly two decades later, the party isn't just his anymore, it's "ours."

Ryan Peter Murphy – Christmas in New England

The 24-year-old New England singer-songwriter makes his debut with a holiday album, due October 23 on Warner Records: twelve songs, all originals, written, produced, engineered, and mixed by Murphy with three of his closest friends and collaborators. He built an audience online first, more than half a billion social media views in the year before Warner signed him, and he calls himself a "Swooner," a Gen-Z answer to the old-school crooner. Warner is billing it as the first time a major label has released a male solo artist's holiday album as his debut. The title track is out now.

The Sound – Christmas LIVE

The Nashville country trio, brothers Levi and Jacob Mills and their dad, Rob, released their debut Christmas collection October 16 through Gaither Music Group, thirteen live acoustic performances built around the three-part harmonies behind their Dove Award-winning work. Classics like "White Christmas" and "Winter Wonderland" sit beside more unexpected picks, including "Here Comes the Sun" and "The Chipmunk Song," along with "New Star Shining" and "Tennessee Christmas." The family went viral in 2025 with short clips of classic country songs sung in a hotel stairwell, a series that passed 100 million views, and the record carries that same down-home, family-room sound.

Charity Gayle – His Name Shall Be

Gayle's new album lands October 23 with thirteen tracks, led by the single "In the Presence of the King." One of the record's songs, "Emmanuel," grew out of a writers' retreat where Gayle and her husband Ryan worked through Scripture together, tracing how the idea of God's presence runs through the whole Bible, the kind of writing process that shapes the record's devotional tone throughout.

David Benoit – A Vince Guaraldi Holiday Symphony

The jazz pianist and composer steps up as conductor on David Benoit Conducts A Vince Guaraldi Holiday Symphony, a tribute to the composer behind A Charlie Brown Christmas, performed with the Czech National Symphony Orchestra. It arrives digitally October 30 and in physical form November 20 through Candid Records, fourteen tracks of full orchestral arrangements drawn from Guaraldi's Christmas and Great Pumpkin scores, plus Benoit's own Peanuts contribution, "Just Like Me." The first single, "Christmas Time Is Here," is out now.

The project was originally commissioned by the family of Peanuts producer Lee Mendelson, and for Benoit it has been a lifetime in the making. He grew up reading Peanuts, once said he was "very much like Charlie Brown," and was already picking Guaraldi's music apart by ear in junior high when A Charlie Brown Christmas first aired. It also comes as something of a victory lap after a successful kidney transplant in 2023, which followed ten years of illness.

Jason Gray – Christmas Stories (Expanded Edition)

On August 27, Gray's Facebook page confirmed he's back in the studio with Cason Cooley, the same producer behind his original 2012 album, Christmas Stories: Repeat the Sounding Joy, working on an expanded edition due October 23 through Centricity Records. Two brand new songs, "More Like Jesus" and "The Way Back," join a studio recording of "Prayers of the People," a song he's played live for years but never actually put to tape. Physical pre-orders are already up. A fourteen-year-old album getting new songs and a real release date is its own kind of finish line, an older one revisited rather than built from scratch.

Sue Foley – Alone (Together) A Holiday Companion

Foley is taking the holiday album somewhere most don't go. Arriving October 30 on CD and vinyl, the eight-song set trades tinsel for Texas blues and late-night jazz atmosphere, following her Grammy-nominated One Guitar Woman. It includes a slowed-down blues rework of AC/DC's "Ride On," pulled toward a Jimmy Reed groove. Foley has said she made the record for people who find the holidays difficult, especially those spending them alone, meant as a companion rather than another dose of forced cheer.

Emerging and Niche Holiday Releases

Smaller releases and quieter announcements are adding fresh sounds to the season too:

Brenna Whitaker – Simply Christmas

Whitaker's first-ever Christmas collection arrives October 30, an eleven-track set anchored by one original, "The Simple Things," co-written with producer Gordon Mote. It's her first holiday release after building a career in traditional country and gospel.

Paul Cardall – Christmas Peace

The Dove Award-winning pianist and composer returns to a full Christmas project on November 13, his first since his previous holiday album won the GMA Dove Award for Instrumental Album of the Year. Two singles are already out, "Season of Creation" and "Little Drummer Boy," the latter released October 2.

James A. Norkawich

Norkawich confirmed on Facebook that new music is coming October 31, 2026, and left it almost entirely at that, no album title, no tracklist, no single, just a date and a description of what the sound is meant to be: piano-driven, lushly arranged, built around what he calls "the sound of coming home."

RIAS Kammerchor Berlin & Justin Doyle – Winter Tales

The Berlin choir and its artistic director released Winter Tales – The Britten Christmas Album on October 16, timed to the fiftieth anniversary of Benjamin Britten's death. The program centers on Britten's A Ceremony of Carols and A Boy Was Born, alongside rarely performed choral works, most of them appearing on Deutsche Grammophon for the first time. Doyle himself was a childhood choirboy at Westminster Cathedral and has been connected to Britten's music since then, and for this recording he worked from scores carrying Britten's own handwritten annotations, gaining insight into exactly how the composer wanted the music to sound.

Also Confirmed

A handful of smaller releases round out the season so far. The King's Singers put out Live at Christmas on October 2. Atlanta jazz vocalist Gwen Hughes continues her Jazz Hymns series with The First Noel: Jazz Hymns for Christmas, with the title track already out. UK vocal group D-Day Darlings, Britain's Got Talent finalists, confirmed a new Christmas album built around an original song, "Here Comes Christmas Again." And Brad Paisley's 2025 album Snow Globe Town arrives on vinyl November 6, adding "That Crazy Elf (On The Shelf)," a track that had only been available digitally, with signed copies also available.

Holiday Singles

Not every new Christmas song arrives with an album behind it. Standalone singles are collected here.

Norah Jones & Chris Stapleton – "April's Gone" A new Christmas duet released October 9, written by Jones with producer Leon Michels, whose collaboration with her began on her 2021 holiday album, I Dream of Christmas. The song follows a relationship fading just as the holidays arrive. Jones says she couldn't stop hearing Stapleton's voice singing it, and after Mickey Raphael connected them, a recording of him singing it landed in her inbox. No album has been announced alongside it.

That's where things stand for now. We'll keep adding to this as more comes out, but the season's already given us more to sit with than expected.