Pink Floyd Announce Animals 50

November 5, 2026 - Five decades on from the bleak picture of 1970's Britain it embodied, Pink Floyd's revered dystopian masterpiece Animals is being newly released in multiple formats and a deluxe box set, out January 22nd, 2027 via Sony Music. The 50th anniversary edition brings fans fresh insight into one of Pink Floyd's most visceral and compelling works, featuring a raft of rare and unreleased music, alongside unseen photographs capturing a unique behind the scenes perspective of the recording process, creation of the iconic album art and groundbreaking tour production.

Animals 50 will be released in multiple formats, including a Deluxe Box Set, 1LP, 2LP, 2CD, Blu-Ray Audio and digital. The Deluxe Box Set contains 3 LPs: the original 1977 album, the 2018 Remix (remixed by James Guthrie), and a disc of five rarities that includes an unheard Roger Waters track titled 'Young Nicholas Jon' and previously unreleased early versions of 'Sheep' and 'Dogs' . It also has 5 CDs mirroring the LPs, plus a 2-disc set of the May 9, 1977 Oakland show recorded live at the Oakland Coliseum Arena by a then 19 year old bootlegger, Reinhard Hohlwein, and the 1-disc Blu-Ray, which includes all of the above audio with the 2018 Remix being available in 5.1 and Dolby Atmos.

The Deluxe Box Set also features a 64-page hardback book comprising new sleeve notes from New York Times best-selling author and life-long Floyd fan Jonathan Lethem, an interview with Reinhard Hohlwein, and an excerpt from Hipgnosis' Aubrey "Po" Powell's memoir about the making of Animals' iconic album art. These fascinating insights are interspersed with previously unpublished images that document the full creative journey, from the album recording to the shooting of the cover at Battersea Power Station and the subsequent global tour. The 1LP contains the original 1977 album in orange and sandstone color variants. The 2LP and 2CD sets contain the original 1977 album plus rarities, as does the digital release, which also features the Oakland show.

The first of this exciting suite of rare and unheard music arrives today. 'Sheep (Original Radio Edit)'; a four and a half minute, promo-only edit made for radio in 1977, which has never been commercially available until now, is available to listen to here . Watch the visualizer here .

Animals remains as relevant in 2026 as it was in 1977. Its dystopian nightmare vision of a society torn apart by greed and hypocrisy continues to fester in the current age of misinformation, disconnection and uncertainty. The music and message is eerily prescient, as Dogs and Pigs still run amongst us, while Sheep are unwittingly manipulated into compliance. There is still a glimmer of hope.

The most lyrically and musically raw of Pink Floyd's albums, Roger Waters' anticapitalist rage bursts its way to the fore, mirrored throughout in David Gilmour's haunting barrage of electric guitar. Recorded themselves at their new, purpose-built studio at Britannia Row, the recording process was not without its teething problems, but the stripped-back set up helped forge the gritty end product.

The incredible creativity and vision that forged Animals is perhaps best exemplified by one of rock's most enduring images: the flying pig. Dreamt up by Roger Waters and delivered by Aubrey Powell and Storm Thorgerson at Hipgnosis, Animals' album artwork vividly illustrates Waters' vision for the record. The crumbling Battersea Power Station he drove past every day represented what Powell describes as "a capitalist monolith, crumbling at the core beneath the overbearing weight of greed, burgeoning bureaucracy and archaic infrastructure," underlined by the pig floating above, symbolizing the greed of the ruling classes.

The story of the shoot itself has become the stuff of legend and helped cement the artwork's legacy. With a 40-foot inflatable pig named Algie commissioned and permission granted to fly it over the station, eight photographers were placed around the station with a helicopter film crew and a police marksman in place to shoot it down if necessary. But a technical failure meant the shoot had to be postponed, and the next day as Algie rose, he broke free of his moorings and began to float toward Heathrow. They had forgotten to rebook the marksman. RAF fighter jets were scrambled and flights were canceled. An international incident was in the offing until a call came in from a farmer in Kent who had found Algie in one of his fields. The story quickly became a press sensation and inspired further inflatable pigs in the groundbreaking production of Pink Floyd's 1977 In The Fleshworld tour.

Discussing the creation of the album art, Roger Waters says: "I'd driven past Battersea Power Station every day going to and from my house in Clapham. I guess I just loved the building. I liked its symbolism that it's a power station and that it belches smoke, so there's something menacing about it. It's got four phallic chimneys, and it looks like an upside down table. And there were four people in the band that had been turned upside down. It seemed like a really cool place for a pig to fly."

Speaking on Animals, David Gilmour says: "The mood in music was changing in '77. Punk music was hitting everything and I suspect that had a little bit of an influence on the way we were working on the Animals album. I mean it's quite an aggressive, stripped-back album. It was moving away from the sort of soundscapes that we had on Wish You Were Here. This album is more in your face and more rough and ready. And definitely the lyrics are a lot more aggressive from Roger. We had a lot of fun making it."

Nick Mason says: "There were all sorts of differences beginning to surface within the band but in some ways Animals was a remarkably cohesive enterprise. The big thing was the development of Britannia Row. Britannia Row was this building we'd bought some few years before in which we'd actually started building our own recording studio. We tried to design the studio in such a way that any of us could operate it and all the trunking was labelled clearly so anyone could plug in a set of headphones without someone else having to do it for us."

The news of Animals 50 is the latest in Pink Floyd's remarkable career and enduring legacy. Earlier this year saw the release of 8-Tracks, a new official compilation project, featuring eight essential classics selected from the band's 1971 - 1979 era. This followed the 50th anniversary release of Wish You Were Here becoming a Top 10 charting album across the world, signaling Pink Floyd's second #1 release of 2025 in the UK, Germany, Italy and Switzerland, 50 years after it first topped the charts. Seven months prior, the cinematic release of Pink Floyd at Pompeii - MCMLXXII became a Top 10 Box Office hit, and the accompanying soundtrack album earned the band's first UK #1 album since 2014's The Endless River - their final studio LP.

Pre-order Animals 50 here .