Music · 6 September 2026
Pet Shop Boys Announce A Man From The Future Album Celebrating Alan Turing
Pet Shop Boys will release A Man From The Future, their musical biography of Alan Turing, on 9 October, alongside a special Manchester listening event.
Pet Shop Boys A Man From The Future album will arrive on 9 October 2026, bringing Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe’s musical biography of pioneering mathematician and codebreaker Alan Turing to record for the first time. The duo confirmed the release on 4 September, alongside details of a special listening and conversation event in Manchester on the eve of the album’s arrival.
Created with Turing biographer Professor Andrew Hodges, A Man From The Future explores eight significant chapters in Turing’s life and death. The work combines Pet Shop Boys’ electronic music with orchestral writing, narration and a biographical text, placing one of Britain’s most important scientific figures at the centre of an unusually ambitious pop project.
A work first heard at the BBC Proms
The project is not entirely new. Pet Shop Boys originally premiered A Man From The Future at the Royal Albert Hall during the BBC Proms in July 2014, with the BBC Concert Orchestra and BBC Singers. Actor Juliet Stevenson provided the narration.
For the 2026 version, both the text and music have been revised and updated. Stevenson returns as narrator, while the Manchester Camerata Octet performs the strings. Sven Helbig, who has worked with Pet Shop Boys on orchestral projects, arranged the strings and co-produced the new recording with Tennant and Lowe.
The result will now be released by Parlophone across several physical formats, including vinyl, CD and Blu-ray editions. The official Pet Shop Boys store lists a standard LP, a 2CD edition, an exclusive green-and-orange double vinyl edition and an exclusive Blu-ray among the pre-order options.
The story of Alan Turing through music
Turing’s significance extends far beyond the history of computing. His wartime cryptanalysis at Bletchley Park played a crucial role in breaking German codes, while his theoretical work helped lay foundations for modern computer science and artificial intelligence.
His life also carries particular resonance for LGBT audiences. Turing was prosecuted in 1952 for homosexual acts, which were then illegal in Britain, and underwent hormonal treatment following his conviction. He died in 1954, aged 41. Decades later, the British state formally acknowledged the injustice he suffered: Turing received a posthumous royal pardon in 2013, and subsequent legislation commonly known as “Turing’s Law” provided pardons for thousands of men convicted under historical laws criminalising same-sex relationships.
Pet Shop Boys’ work approaches that life as a sequence rather than attempting to turn it into a conventional collection of pop songs. The official description calls the project an “audio/musical biography”, reflecting its blend of narration, electronics and orchestral performance.
Manchester event planned before release
To mark the album, Tennant and Lowe will join Andrew Hodges at Imperial War Museum North in Manchester on Thursday 8 October. The event will include a complete playback of A Man From The Future, followed by a conversation between Pet Shop Boys and Hodges about the work.
Tickets are due to go on sale on Monday 7 September at 10am BST. Pet Shop Boys say the discussion will also be filmed and subsequently made available online.
The album will additionally receive significant BBC exposure before release. A world-exclusive broadcast of the revised recording is scheduled for Sunday 4 October on BBC Radio 6 Music during Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone. Later that evening, BBC Radio 3’s Unclassified will also broadcast the work, with Tennant, Lowe and Hodges joining presenter Elizabeth Alker to discuss its creation and evolution.
A distinctive new chapter for Pet Shop Boys
The announcement places A Man From The Future outside the usual cycle of singles, dance remixes and greatest-hits touring associated with Pet Shop Boys, while still drawing on the electronic and orchestral combinations that have appeared throughout their career.
It also gives a work previously experienced primarily as a one-off Proms performance a permanent recorded form. More than twelve years after that Royal Albert Hall premiere, listeners will be able to hear the revised piece as an album in its own right.
Pet Shop Boys A Man From The Future album is released through Parlophone on 9 October 2026.