DIVA AS TECHNOLOGY
Arca officially announces the details of her highly anticipated new studio album, XXXXX, arriving July 31st via XL Recordings. Five years after the twice GRAMMY-nominated KiCk i and subsequent KICK pentalogy, the Venezuelan-born musician, producer, vocalist, and visual artist returns with her first full-length album since concluding one of the most ambitious chapters in contemporary music.
Alongside the announcement of XXXXX, Arca has confirmed a new Diva.Experimental transmission: an immersive and ambitious livestream experience directed by Daniel Sannwald, and styled by Akeem Smith. Premiering July 23 live from Barcelona on Twitch and YouTube beginning at 9:30 PM CEST, the two-hour performance will offer fans a first glimpse into the album’s world ahead of its official release. Incorporating multiple performances of unreleased album tracks across seven distinct locations, the production blurs the boundaries between IRL, streaming, durational performance, and hallucination.
XXXXX Livestream tune-in link here: https://arca.x-l.co/livestream
The livestream is presented with support from Feeld. Speaking of the collaboration, Arca shared: “With Feeld’s support and investment, we’re able to put on a show for you with full glam and budget. Thank you for supporting experimental art. Please tune in. We’re working really hard to create a great show for you, wherever you are.”
If the KICK era expanded Arca‘s universe outward, XXXXX turns inward and fractures it apart. Across 16 tracks, the album excavates vastly different emotional landscapes to deliver a body of work that is darker, more aggressive, more experimental, and unwilling to settle into fixed form. Initially conceived as a mixtape before revealing itself as an album, XXXXX embraces contradiction as a core methodology. In the spirit of her previous mixtapes @@@@@ (2020)—released as a 62-minute single—and &&&&& (2013), XXXXX thrives on raw exploration and instinct. It arrives as a deliberate interruption of expectation.
“It seems playful, also mischievous, to interrupt that autopilot,” says Arca.
The album’s striking artwork depicts Arca as a biomechanical entity, accompanied by two owls—symbols of protection and the underworld in Greek mythology. Like the music itself, the imagery inhabits a space between worlds where transformation is both terrifying and liberatory. Suspended between posthuman augmentation and raw emotion, XXXXX exposes the mainframe. It is a record born from uncertainty, contradiction, instinct, and surrender—a becoming-machine that continues Arca’s lifelong project of redefining what it means to be human both in, and against, the machine.
For Arca, rebirth has never been a metaphor, but a practice. She continues to exist in multiple states simultaneously, collapsing boundaries between human and machine, high and low culture, and experimental noise and pop music. Following her first-ever painting exhibition at London’s ICA earlier this year, XXXXX arrives as the latest transmission from a continuously evolving creative process. Over the last year, Arca has remained prolific: unveiling the double-sided single ‘Puta’ / ‘Sola’; remixing tracks for Addison Rae, Robyn, and Hikaru Utada; collaborating with Tokischa on ‘Chama’; and contributing production to Madonna’s CONFESSIONS II. She walked the runways and made appearances at major international fashion weeks, while also composing the original motion picture soundtrack for Stillz’s film, Barrio Triste.
Now, after years of transformation beneath the surface, her next musical evolution reveals itself.
Arca
XXXXX
July, 31 2026 // XL Recordings
Track list:
No End
Willow
Eidolon
Heart
Syncope
Raver
Clinch
Fxck
Finisher
Grip
Enraptured
Throb
Everything
Sueño
For more information on Arca:
Official Arca Website / Twitch / Discord / Instagram / Twitter
