Antillectual

Trigger warning! If you’ve been following us for a while, you might feel old reading or watching this:

Check the announcement video!

Today, January 13, 2026, we are celebrating our 25th birthday! Twenty five years of Antillectual sounds crazy, especially since this band started as some friends with hardly any musical experience, ambition or talent. We will be celebrating our anniversary throughout all of 2026 with a lot of special events like throwbacks, tours, a new album and the publication of an actual book, how intellectual!

Pinpointing the start of this band is very arbitrary. We started rehearsing sometime in 1999, consolidated a lineup sometime in 2000 and even did our first demo that year. Over the years we evolved as a band, changed our approach and had many lineup changes. Nonetheless it’s a fact that we’ve been playing shows for twenty-fucking-five years… time to celebrate!

Play Live

In 25 years we have played 1200 shows, so it only makes sense that we are going to play some more to celebrate our anniversary! Starting with the second part of our Dutch tour promoting the ANTILLECTUEEL EP, followed by playing Pouzza Fest and a Canadian tour around it, which we will announce in the next weeks.

Jan 29 Haarlem, Patronaat. w/ Third Ego, Rites
Feb 13 Dordrecht, Bibelot. w/ Skroetbalg, Bovendanen
Mar 13 Rotterdam, Voigt. w/ Video Store, De Dikke Kees
Apr 01 Arnhem, Willemeen. w/ All Dogs Go To Heaven
Apr 09 Hoofddorp, Cpunt. w/ Pussy Riot
Apr 11 Zwolle, Skroetfest. w/ Skroetbalg, March, State Power a.o.
May 15 CA Montreal, Pouzza Fest. w/ Pup, Buzzcocks, Makewar, Krang, Not Scientists and many others!

Info & tickets via our site. Many more dates to come…

Release Music

In 2026 we will also release a new full length album, featuring previously released singles “Whose Streets? Our Streets!”, “Post Teens” and 8-10 new songs. All in English, maak je geen zorgen! Leading up to the release of the album we will release a handful of new singles.

Publish A Book

Something that we didn’t know was on our bucket list: creating a book! After 25 years of being a band, releasing music and being on the road it’s time to share some stories that aren’t suitable for social media or newsletters. Throughout the year we will publish excerpts – Ox Fanzine already gave a sneaky preview in issue 182 – and we will give you more details on what you can expect before starting the pre-order. Here’s a tiny hint: plenty of words, unseen illustrations and barely heard music.

TL;DR? Happy birthday to us!

That’s it for now, thanks for loyally reading our newsletter in times of unreliable social media! We love hearing from you, so don’t be shy and hit reply! In the next episode we’ll share the dates of our Canadian tour…

Take care! Ben, Riekus & Willem

Missed our previous newsletter? Find it here!

We will continue where we left off in 2025: converting the world to Dutch! Check ANTILLECTUEEL to improve your Nederlands and check our interpretations of Green Day, Blink, ao! antillectual.com/antillectueel for streaming and physical vinyl copies! Or via YouTube:

Live:
Jan 09 Utrecht, dB’s. w/ Go Faster Nuns, 2 Star Review, Zakmes
Jan 10 Leiden, Resistor. w/ Coral Springs, Dishes
Jan 29 Haarlem, Patronaat. w/ Third Ego, Rites
Feb 13 Dordrecht, Bibelot. w/ Skroetbalg, Bovendanen
Mar 13 Rotterdam, Voigt. w/ Video Store, De Dikke Kees
Apr 01 Arnhem, Willemeen. w/ All Dogs Go To Heaven
Apr 09 Hoofddorp, To Be Announced. w/ To Be Announced
Apr 11 Zwolle, Skroetfest. w/ Skroetbalg, March, State Power ao

We’re kicking off ’26 playing the new dB’s Utrecht and Resistor in Leiden next weekend! Let’s party like it’s 2026! We’ve expanded the ANTILLECTUEEL tour with shows in Dordrecht, Rotterdam, Arnhem and Hoofddorp!

Info & tix at antillectual.com/shows

Jan 09 Utrecht, dB’s. w/ Go Faster Nuns, 2 Star Review, Zakmes
Jan 10 Leiden, Resistor. w/ Coral Springs, Dishes
Jan 29 Haarlem, Patronaat. w/ Third Ego, Rites
Feb 13 Dordrecht, Bibelot. w/ Skroetbalg, Bovendanen
Mar 13 Rotterdam, Voigt. w/ Video Store, De Dikke Kees
Apr 01 Arnhem, Willemeen. w/ All Dogs Go To Heaven
Apr 09 Hoofddorp, To Be Announced. w/ To Be Announced
Apr 11 Zwolle, Skroetfest. w/ Skroetbalg, March, State Power ao

The world has become a darker place this year. Being active in an independent community and having an outlet to get rid of frustrations is a life saver at this point. Not just for us as a band, but for most people involved in this community, and why not: for the world as a whole. We got to do a lot of amazing things in 2025 which kept our spirits high while trying to lift others’.

The first thing we did in January of this year, and kept doing throughout the whole year, was working on new music. We visited Tim van Doorn at Big Dog Recordings a lot to work on new music, leading to the recording of quite some songs, of which 2 singles and an EP.

In February we released “Whose Streets? Our Streets!”, the first single after our 2023 album TOGETHER. Right after we kicked off our most extensive German/Swiss tour to date. From playing a seated cinema in Bottrop, to the tiniest of bars in Bremen to a lot of autonomous places that we feel at home at like Immerhin, Gängeviertel and Stumpf, to cities that we love like Berlin, Hamburg and Nürnberg.

In March we released the New Road Music session, our first ever live recorded video session. So much fun to do, and we learned a lot from it!

By Roos de Huu

April brought us a show with our friends in No Fun At All, finally returning to Switzerland and more recordings.

Festival season started early in May, with shows at Punk Meets People, the Reconstruction Tour and the farewell festival of Mr Pierre.

Our summer was a mixed bag, some parts definitely sucked. We were mostly active behind the screens; writing songs, making demos of them and recording the final result. We also released a single that we were extremely excited about, Post Teens, featuring Roos de Huu on guest vocals and making an awesome video for it. Some shows and festivals got cancelled, leading to a quieter summer than we hoped. However, playing Tells Bells was a longtime dream coming true and living up to the expectations! And the Big Dog Recordings Pizza Session was something else! To be continued in 2026…

By Titus Hellinge

September brought us to Sassenberg for the cozy Kottenrock festival, and the Dutch cat started crawling out of its bag.

In October we released our first ever song in Dutch, Voorang Voor Rechts. It warmed our cold hearts that others enjoyed us singing in Dutch as much as we do!

By Roos de Huu

In November ANTILLECTUEEL came out, our first ever EP in Dutch. Featuring 2 full songs and some “jingles”, covers and tributes. We kicked of our Dutch tour, with a false start after venues and bands tought the tour artwork was too extreme and canceled…

By Lars Jansen

December continued with more Dutch shows. And we kept preparing 2026 plans, with the Canadian Pouzza Fest being the first announcement of fun things to come! And of course, the 9th edition of our own Friends First Fest was the perfect way to end our year!

Individually 2025 was eventful as well: Ben moved houses, Riekus played a lot of shows with other bands and Willem broke his thumb and started teaching about protest music.

In 2025 we’ve also been working hard on things we can’t disclose yet. On January 13 we will lift the veil a little…

Many thanks go out to the people that helped us out in 2025! Our road crew: Roos, Rein, Kevin, Chris and their golden hands and hearts. Hage at Spider Promotion, Ben at Trusty Chords and Steve at Merit Based helping out with shows. And a special shoutout to Jürgen at Rookie Records for helping out with spreading the word about what we do! And of course, the biggest of thanks go out to YOU; for checking what we do, listening to our music, coming to our shows and getting some merch

See you on the other side! Willem, Riekus & Ben

It’s the last 3 days of the year, time for our triptych tradition! Starting today with our Best Of The Year playlist 🖤🔥The 30 greatest hits of 2025, compiled by the 3 of us! Curious if you can tell who contributed what songs? Since we hate (the pseudo monopoly that) Spotify (has), we also created the same playlist on Tidal:

Best Of 2025 on Tidal
Best Of 2025 on Spotify