Judas Priest didn't go away after the 1980s, though metal kind of diminished for a bit with the rise of hair metal. Some of the lords of rock were outshone by less worthy bands. Priest, however, never stopped making elite metal.
That will seemingly continue to be the case into the future as well. According to an interview, guitarist Richie Faulkner gave The Metal Voice, the band was in the studio for "a month" recently, "laying the foundation" for a new record.
A month seems like a long time to not bash out a bunch of new tunes and have them nearly ready to release. Some bands deliver albums after a couple of weeks, but as most fans know, Priest isn't going to deliver anything that doesn't have pristine sound. Maybe a month is long enough to record songs, but it might take months to actually create the entire work.
2026 will be a very good year to be a Judas Priest fan
Faulkner did add, "I don't know if I'm allowed to say that, but I've said it." Fans won't be miffed that he might have teased something in the works before the band was ready for the world to know.
But the good Judas Priest-related news doesn't end with the potential new album. The band is also playing a handful of festivals this summer in Europe before doing more of a proper headlining tour in September. If you are planning a vacation, you might want to see where the group is playing and plan accordingly.
The band also has a documentary, The Ballad of Judas Priest, about their 50 years of making music, which is being shown at the Hot Docs festival in Toronto. That will run from April 23 through May 3. It premiered in Berlin in February, and one can assume it will be made available to the masses sometime in 2026.
Other metal bands will have docs released this year, too. Iron Maiden's Burning Ambition will arrive in theaters on May 7, for instance.
Yet, there is more. Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford will be a guest vocalist on William Shatner's (yes, you read that correctly) new heavy metal album. Halford and Shatner will do a cover of Priest's "You've Got Another Thing Comin'." Others involved in the forthcoming project include Henry Rollins, Zakk Wylde, and the late Wayne Kramer of MC5. That should be interesting.