Official Folk Albums Chart September 2026
14 new releases have entered the September chart!
Brand new at No. 1 is Jamie Webster’s fourth studio album Running Round The Sun (Modern Sky). This release builds on the directness and working-class perspective that have defined Webster’s earlier releases, while exploring themes of identity, resilience and mental wellbeing with greater openness.
New at No. 3 is Paddywhackery (BC Records), a poignant combination of Irish trad, rock and punk from Dundalk’s The Mary Wallopers. Recorded over an intense two week period, Paddywhackery reclaims a slur, leans into a sound that foreigners once perceived as cartoonishly Irish, and reignites the sociopolitical furvor inherent in its heritage.
Arriving at No. 5 is The Knife, The Needle (Merge) by Elanor Moss. Across the nine songs that make up this album, Moss renders joy and pain in pearls of psych-folk, offering an understanding of healing as a process rather than an object that one obtains. Written over three years as she recalibrated her relationship with songwriting, therapy and her family history, the album returns to “the music that made me really feel something; the music I wanted to be writing.”
Landing at No. 8 is South Wales folk-rock favourites Rusty Shackle’s sixth album Mayfield (Get Folked). Named after the McKeon family home where the band first found their sound, the album is both like a love letter to where Rusty Shackle began and a confident statement of where they are heading next. Built on the foundation of their folk and Celtic roots, Mayfield also pushes the band into a heavier, more ambitious new territory.
At No. 9 is folk supergroup Spell Songs’ third album In Thin Air (Hudson Records). Written and performed by seven acclaimed Folk and World musicians, In Thin Air is an homage to The Book of Birds, a collaboration by award winning artist Jackie Morris and renowned conservation author Robert Macfarlane. Both the book and Spell Song’s new album are creative responses to the great thinning of our skies.
British folk and electronic musician Oliver Cherer offers the latest Gilroy Mere album Furlongs (Clay Pipe Music), landing at No. 10. At the beginning of 2025, Oliver was diagnosed with cancer and had to attend Brighton Hospital every day for radiotherapy. Travelling forty miles by train, he would pass the Long Man twice daily and became well-accustomed with the landscapes captured in Eric Ravilious’ famous artworks. “After more than a month immersed in his scenery, my laptop sketches crystallised into something that began to sound like a record, and by the end of the six weeks, I had more than enough material for this album.”
At No. 14 is visionary artist Keath Ósk’s debut solo album Foreword (Atlantic Records). By releasing music under their own name and identity, Ósk reframes the mythological world they first created through the multimedia folk project Yaelokre. What once lived inside a fictional, folklore-driven universe now carries the weight of self-definition, allowing this collection of songs to feel both familiar and newly exposed.
Coming in at No. 15 is Max Kinghorn-Mills’ new Hollow Hand album Wish Road South (Loose Music). Hollow Hand has always been a vehicle for Kinghorn-Mills’ songs, but having experienced the spark and connectivity of being around more bands, he decided to change tack. Along with Oliver Newton (drums) and Leo Clarke (bass), they got together in their Brighton studio space and tracked the songs live as a band. The result is a record in which you can feel the fun coursing through it, as the zest of a reconfigured and tightly-knit group of musicians burns as brightly as the beautifully melodic and unique songs that they’ve carved out.
At No. 16 is Colin Stetson and Brìghde Chaimbeul’s collaboration All the Light in the World (Invada), an album that feels both ancient and immediate. Built from deep listening, improvisation, and an instinct for emotional intensity, the record merges Stetson’s innovative approach to the saxophone with Chaimbeul’s singular command of the Scottish small pipes, creating music that drifts between drone, ritual and cinematic expanse.
British-Brazilian singer-songwriter Liana Flores’ new album And so it goes…(Fiction) arrives at No. 18. Shaped by the ebb-and-flow of touring, relationships, and getting older, this EP marks an expansion of Liana’s palette, encompassing the playful and ebullient experiences of moving from her rural hometown in Norfolk to St. Andrews before coming to London. The result is a six-track collection that shifts between finger-picked guitar, gossamer bossa vocals, and upbeat funk, an eclectic mix of sound that calls upon musical inspiration spanning generations and genres.
Coming in at No. 19 is an album of songs of Woody Guthrie performed by a man who has been devoted to the subject for most of his adult life. Andy Irvine’s Devoted (The Last Music Company) is a collection in the making for at least thirty years. It is unique in its Irish approach with immediately recognisable connections to Woody Guthrie's playing and singing style as a result of Andy's sixty plus years of studying his works.
At No. 20 is Blind Yeo’s debut album The Lemoine Point (Les Disques Bongo Joe). In geometry, the Lemoine point refers to a hidden centre, not immediately visible, where the lines of a triangle converge. Blind Yeo adopt this idea as a compositional principle, bringing together different temporalities, narratives and emotional states into a single moment. The album becomes a point of anchoring where past, present and future coexist, where memory, grief, desire and projection are woven into the same sonic fabric.
Commemorating ten years since his passing, Bap Kennedy’s Above All, Love (Lonely Street Discs) arrives at No. 26. The album has been curated and produced by Brenda Kennedy, Bap’s wife and longtime musical collaborator, who has brought these recordings carefully into the world for listeners old and new. Rather than a retrospective compilation, Above All, Love offers something rare: ten unheard songs from a songwriter whose work continues to connect across generations and genres.
Landing at No. 34 is Paahto & The Bull‘s debut album The 123 (Decca Records). Named after the Dublin bus route that connected the two musicians’ houses, the album captures the intimacy of two musical minds meeting and reflects the unique sound that Cummins and Flynn have consistently created together over the past fifteen years.
View the full chart HERE.
