Five years after the twice GRAMMY-nominated KiCk i and the subsequent KICK pentology, the Venezuelan-born musician, producer, DJ, vocalist, and visual artist returns with her first full-length album since completing one of the most ambitious and influential projects in contemporary music.
The release follows last week’s acclaimed Diva.Experimental livestream transmission, a two-hour performance directed by Daniel Sannwald, with lighting design by Matiere Noire, staged live from an abandoned factory in Barcelona. Broadcast globally via Twitch and YouTube, with the support of Feeld, the event offered fans their first glimpse into the world of XXXXX, with Arca performing the album in its entirety across a series of striking environments that blurred the boundaries between livestream, durational performance, visual art, and posthuman spectacle.
Highlights included the cyborgian masked performances of ‘Willow,’ ‘Grip,’ and ‘Tacondeando,’ before a visceral sequence during ‘Fxck’ and ‘Finisher,’ where Arca covered herself and a canvas with paint and synthetic blood, shedding her technological armor in an act of cathartic self-exposure. The livestream culminated in a transcendent performance of album closer ‘Sueño,’ with Arca laid bare in the shape of a cross as the record’s themes of sacrifice, transformation, and rebirth reached their final form.
In the days leading up to release, the Diva.Experimental transmission continued to unfold through 12 music videos drawn from the livestream, each arriving daily as another fragment of XXXXX revealed itself.
This past week, XXXXX fan-hosted listening parties brought fans together in cities around the world to celebrate her new album. From New York and Los Angeles to London, Mexico City, Barcelona, and Tokyo, the events created spaces for fans to listen, connect, and experience the record together. Arca made a surprise guest appearance at the Barcelona event, while Dazed covered the London gathering (link here).
If the KICK era expanded Arca’s universe outward, XXXXX (released via XL Recordings) 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) and &&&&& (2013), the album thrives on raw exploration and instinct, arriving as a deliberate interruption of expectation.
“It seems playful, also mischievous, to interrupt that autopilot,” says Arca.
The album’s 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. 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 past year, she has unveiled the double-sided single “Puta” / “Sola,” remixed tracks for Addison Rae, Robyn, and Hikaru Utada, collaborated with Tokischa on “Chama,” and contributed production to Madonna’s CONFESSIONS II. She also appeared at major international fashion weeks and composed the original score for Stillz’s film Barrio Triste.
Now, after years of transformation beneath the surface, Arca’s next musical evolution has arrived.
Arca
XXXXX
July, 31 2026 // XL Recordings
Vinyl On-sale Today, Out November 13
XXXXX Album Artwork by Kaan Ulgener– (download
XXXXX Vinyl Artwork
D2C White Label XXXXX Vinyl Artwork
For more information on Arca:
Official Arca Website / Twitch / Discord / Instagram / Twitter
