The National reveal plans for their first performance since 2024

The National have revealed details of their first concert since 2024, with the group preparing to return to the stage later this year.

The group will play an exclusive standalone concert during the AB100 festival in San Sebastián.

Titled “The National And Friends”, the show will take place at Kursaal Donostia on October 18. The National will be joined by Kevin Morby, Ben Howard, Jon Hopkins, Mina Tindle, Ragnar Kjartansson, Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Perry, Anaïs Mitchell, and several other guests.

Tickets will become available on August 3 at 11.30am Central European Time, or 10.30am BST, and can be bought here.

The National most recently released two records in 2023, ‘The First Two Pages Of Frankenstein’ and ‘Laugh Track’.

During an interview with NME in 2024, the musicians said they were working within a “very creative space” and had entered the “gardening phase” of developing fresh music.

Since that conversation, singer Matt Berninger has shared his latest solo record, ‘Get Sunk’. At the time, he explained that much of the writing for his second individual album was completed on baseballs.

“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.

“It’s like writing a novel with one finger. Maybe that’s the way Hemingway wrote and why his sentences are so good? Because he just fucking thought about every word.”

Over the past few years, Aaron Dessner has contributed to numerous projects, including Mumford & Sons’ ‘Prizefighter’, Gracie Abrams’ ‘The Secret Of Us’ and ‘Daughter From Hell’, Florence + The Machine’s ‘Everybody Scream’, and Brandi Carlile’s ‘Returning To Myself’.

More recently, he dismissed speculation that Abrams’ track ‘Death Wish’ was written about Taylor Swift, another artist he has previously collaborated with.