A record broken, a friendship forged, and a stadium show in Leigh; 2026 has been quite the year for Northern pop
Image src: Robbie Williams, By: Fraser Mummery, Source: flickr, License: by | //creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
Two things happened in British pop in early 2026 that deserve to be told together. First, Robbie Williams broke The Beatles’ record for the most number-one albums in UK chart history with BRITPOP; his sixteenth, and the one he has arguably been building toward for thirty years. Second, a TikToker told Thom Rylance of The Lottery Winners that he was not a real celebrity, and Robbie Williams took extremely polite but very public exception to that.
The result is one of the more joyful stories in recent British music; a global icon and a lad from Leigh, Greater Manchester, who spent fifteen years playing pub gigs before landing back-to-back number ones, finding each other and deciding they are basically the same person. They are not entirely wrong.
Sixteen Number Ones; More Than the Beatles
Let us start with the history, because it genuinely deserves a moment. On January 16, 2026, Robbie Williams’ thirteenth studio album BRITPOP debuted at number one on the UK Official Albums Chart. It was his sixteenth chart-topping album overall (including compilations and swing records), surpassing The Beatles’ long-standing record of fifteen.
The path to that sixteenth was not entirely straightforward. Williams had originally planned to release BRITPOP in October 2025, then thought better of it when he looked at the competition.
“You can’t compete with that.” (Robbie Williams, on Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl release window)
He pushed back to February 2026, then moved it forward again to the quieter window of January 16; a calculated choice to maximise physical sales during a period of lower general chart activity. It worked. BRITPOP fended off Olivia Dean and Madison Beer to land at the top, and Robbie Williams became the most number-one-album artist in UK chart history.
The album itself is a deliberate reimagining; the record Williams says he would have made in 1995 if he had stayed focused on the guitar-driven energy of the actual Britpop era. Co-written with touring band members Karl Brazil and Owen Parker, it opens with “Rocket,” featuring Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath on guitar and Glenn Hughes on vocals, which sets the tone immediately. There is also “Morrissey,” a synth-pop track co-written with Gary Barlow that is described as faintly homoerotic and entirely intentional about it. And there are tracks like “All My Life” and “Spies” that draw directly on the hedonism and chaos of Williams’ own 1990s; with a vocal drawl that knowingly echoes Liam Gallagher.
It is fun, it is self-aware, and it sounds like a man who has absolutely nothing left to prove making exactly the record he wanted to make.
Robbie Williams; the number one albums in full:
The Lottery Winners; Fifteen Years in the Making
The Lottery Winners; Thom Rylance, Rob Lally, Katie Lloyd, and Joe Singleton; formed in Leigh, Greater Manchester in 2008 and spent the next fifteen years doing it the old-fashioned way. Pub gigs, club gigs, van trips, and the kind of relentless touring that either breaks a band or forges them into something unbreakable.
In 2019 they were discovered by Sire Records boss Seymour Stein (the man who signed Madonna and the Ramones), who compared them to The Smiths. Their self-titled major label debut arrived in 2020, right as a global pandemic shut down every venue they had spent a decade building a following in. They responded by recording Sounds of Isolation; a covers album made entirely in lockdown; and kept going.
Their 2023 album Anxiety Replacement Therapy went to number one. Their 2025 album KOKO (Keep On Keeping On) went to number one. Two consecutive chart-toppers, two decades after they started, with zero relocation to London and zero compromise on who they are.
KOKO was shaped significantly by Rylance receiving an ADHD diagnosis during the writing process. The album; featuring collaborations with Chad Kroeger of Nickelback, Frank Turner, and Rick Witter of Shed Seven; became a warm, upbeat, and deeply personal manifesto for neurodivergent resilience. The opening track “Superpower” is exactly what it sounds like. “Panic Attack” wraps suffocating anxiety in an irresistibly cheerful melody. “The Ceiling” with Witter swaggers like it was recorded in 1995 Madchester and is all the better for it.
The Lottery Winners; albums at a glance:
How This All Started; BBC Radio 2 and an Instagram DM
Williams heard The Lottery Winners’ single “You Again” on BBC Radio 2 and went straight to Instagram to tell them. What followed was not a polite exchange of pleasantries; it was a full deep dive. Williams watched every interview, every YouTube video, every live performance he could find. By the end of it he had decided that Thom Rylance was, in his words, “the most important person I’ve met in the last 12 months.”
During the 2025 BRITPOP arena tour, The Lottery Winners supported Williams on the road. In Manchester and London, Rylance was brought onto the C Stage during the headline set to perform acoustic versions of Williams’ songs; an intimate moment dropped into the middle of an arena spectacle that the audience responded to immediately. For Rylance, it was a genuinely full-circle experience; the first song he ever performed in public was Williams’ “Strong.”
The two have an obvious shared frequency; both Northern, both funny, both extraordinarily open about the mental health challenges that have shaped their lives and their music. Williams has spoken publicly about addiction and anxiety for decades. Rylance has built his most recent album around an ADHD diagnosis. Neither of them does the “everything is fine” version of pop stardom, and that shared honesty is clearly a large part of what drew them to each other.
The TikTok Incident; and Why It Mattered
Following the 2026 BRIT Awards, a social media creator posted a viral video arguing that the UK “doesn’t have any real celebrities” and that several of the attendees; Rylance among them; were essentially invented. Rylance responded with a video walking through his fifteen-year career, his two number-one albums, and his status as a genuinely working musician who had earned every step.
Then Robbie Williams weighed in. His comment was characteristically direct; he described Rylance as “the most talented, kind, funny, charismatic human being I’ve come across in 35 years in show business” and took clear exception to the idea that fifteen years of hard graft could be casually dismissed because someone on TikTok did not recognise the name.
“The most talented, kind, funny, charismatic human being I’ve come across in 35 years in show business.” (Robbie Williams on Thom Rylance)
It was the right thing to say, and it landed well. The broader point being made; that traditional artistic labour and digital notoriety are not the same thing and should not be treated as equivalent; is one that the music industry has been quietly debating for years. Williams saying it publicly, in defence of a smaller act, gave it a weight it would not otherwise have had.
The Homecoming; Leigh Sports Village, May 30, 2026
On May 30, 2026, The Lottery Winners will headline Leigh Sports Village Stadium. They will be only the third act to headline that venue, after Elton John and Lionel Richie. The announcement video featured a cameo from Robbie Williams, which at this point feels entirely appropriate.
For the town of Leigh, this is enormous. Rylance has spoken repeatedly about the community support that sustained the band through fifteen years of near-misses and gradual progress; the sense that Leigh gets behind its own. A stadium show in your hometown, following two number-one albums, after two decades of not giving up, is the “Keep On Keeping On” story told in a single booking.
The lineup brings together the people who have mattered most along the way; Frank Turner and Reverend and The Makers as special guests, Scouting for Girls in support. DJ Katie Owen rounds out the bill.
The Bottom Line
Robbie Williams broke a Beatles record, made the album he always wanted to make, and used his platform to champion a band he genuinely believes in. The Lottery Winners spent fifteen years proving everyone wrong, got two number ones, and are about to headline a stadium in their hometown with one of the most decorated artists in UK chart history in their corner.
Both of them are Northern. Both of them are funny. Both of them are searingly honest about the hard bits of being human in public. And somehow, via a BBC Radio 2 play and an Instagram comment, they found each other at exactly the right moment for both of them.
British pop in 2026 is doing just fine. Whatever that TikToker thinks.
Get the Music
Both albums are available now on CD and vinyl.
The Lottery Winners; KOKO (CD and Vinyl): //amzn.to/4r9K7GI
Robbie Williams; BRITPOP (CD and Vinyl): //amzn.to/4rPmwwa
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CKDS Radio | News and Features | March 2026
