--- title: "The Best Jungle and DnB Tracks of 2026 So Far" description: "The best jungle and DnB tracks of 2026, from Nia Archives' Mercury-shortlisted Emotional Junglist to Chase & Status, checked for label and release date." author: "MNEEMO (Yaroslav Gorovoy)" section: "The World" published: "2026-09-10T08:00:00Z" modified: "2026-09-10T08:00:00Z" canonical: "https://www.mneemo.com/blog/best-jungle-dnb-tracks-2026/" --- # The Best Jungle and DnB Tracks of 2026 So Far _The best jungle and DnB tracks of 2026, from Nia Archives' Mercury-shortlisted Emotional Junglist to Chase & Status, checked for label and release date._ ![Chase and Status performing on a festival stage](https://www.mneemo.com/assets/blog/best-jungle-dnb-tracks-2026/hero.jpg?v=ea081213) **The best jungle and drum and bass tracks of 2026 so far split cleanly into two lanes: the jungle revival, led by Nia Archives and the singles from her Mercury-shortlisted album *Emotional Junglist*, and mainstream crossover DnB, led by Chase & Status and their pair of chart-facing singles "Through The Pain" and "Disgruntled".** That divide is the whole story of the year. Playlists flatten it, and almost nobody separates the breakbeat, soundsystem lineage of jungle from the festival main-stage machine that drum and bass has become. We do, because we play both. Written from behind the decks of a London collective, this is a working DJ's read on what has actually landed on a system in 2026, with every artist, title, label and date checked against current sources. ## Best jungle and DnB tracks 2026 at a glance - **Album of the year contender:** Nia Archives, *Emotional Junglist*, released 17 July 2026 on Hijinxx / Island, 15 tracks. - **Chart peak:** *Emotional Junglist* hit No. 1 on the UK Dance Albums Chart and No. 30 on the UK Albums Chart. - **The Mercury moment:** *Emotional Junglist* is one of 12 albums shortlisted for the 2026 Mercury Prize; the winner is announced 22 October 2026 at Newcastle's Utilita Arena. - **Jungle singles to know:** "Danger" (late March), "Boys in Blue" (late April), "Vertical" (4 June) and "Get Me Down" featuring Jorja Smith (10 July), all 2026. - **Crossover DnB single one:** Chase & Status, "Through The Pain" featuring Pozer, released 10 March 2026 on EMI. - **Crossover DnB single two:** Chase & Status, "Disgruntled" featuring J Hus & IRAH, released late July 2026. - **The template:** "Baddadan" by Chase & Status & Bou featuring IRAH, Flowdan, Trigga & Takura, released 27 July 2023, peaked at No. 5 in the UK. - **Jump-up figurehead:** Bou, who runs the Gossip label and featured on "Baddadan". - **Underground engine:** [Tim Reaper](https://www.mneemo.com/blog/tim-reaper-real-name-jungle-2026/), SHERELLE and NAINA's Hooversound Recordings, and Coco Bryce keep the 160-plus bpm end alive. - **Speed:** both genres sit around 160 to 174bpm; the difference is texture and lineage, not just tempo. - **Precedent:** Nia Archives' 2024 debut *Silence Is Loud* was the first jungle album Mercury-nominated in 26 years. - **Where to hear it:** The Warehouse Project, Notting Hill Carnival soundsystems and dedicated DnB nights across the UK. ## How we picked these, and where jungle ends and DnB begins A word on method first, because it is the thing the listicles skip. Every track here has been checked for artist, exact title, label and release date against primary and major-outlet sources. Where a date is contested, we have said so rather than print a false precision, and where we could not confirm a claim to that standard, it is not in this piece. That is a low bar to set out loud, but it is one most "top 25 DnB tracks" pages fail to clear. The harder question is definitional. Jungle and drum and bass are close relatives, both built on chopped breakbeats and heavy sub-bass at roughly 160 to 174bpm, and plenty of people use the words interchangeably. We do not. Jungle, the early-to-mid-90s form, leans on the reggae and ragga soundsystem lineage: rougher breaks, dubwise low end, MC culture, a direct line back to figures like Congo Natty. Drum and bass is the broader, often cleaner, more produced evolution that followed and eventually reached festival main stages. Resident Advisor's short documentary "What Makes Something Jungle?" is the primer worth watching if you want the distinction drawn by people who care about it. Keep that split in mind and the year organises itself: a jungle lane driven by critical and cultural momentum, and a DnB lane driven by chart and festival reach. ## Why 2026 is a landmark year for jungle and DnB The revival did not start this year. The Guardian ran a piece headlined "Subwoofers at the ready! The jungle and drum'n'bass revival is upon us" back on 16 June 2021, and the underground had been building the case for a decade before that. What 2026 delivered was the establishment moment. Nia Archives' second album *Emotional Junglist* landed on the 2026 Mercury Prize shortlist, sharing the list with Dave, RAYE, Loyle Carner, Sam Fender, Florence + The Machine, Kojey Radical, Paul McCartney and Kae Tempest. That is jungle standing next to the biggest names in British music, judged on the same terms, and it is the "why now" that no playlist articulates. It is also a repeat, not a fluke. Her 2024 debut *Silence Is Loud* was reported as the first jungle album nominated for the Mercury Prize in 26 years, from a form that spent most of its life locked out of that conversation. The winner of the 2026 prize will not be announced until 22 October 2026 at Newcastle's Utilita Arena, so as this piece publishes the result is still open. Shortlisted, though, is already the headline. For the fuller story of the artist at the centre of it, we have a dedicated profile on [Nia Archives and the jungle revival](https://www.mneemo.com/blog/nia-archives-real-name-jungle-emotional-junglist-2026/). ## The jungle revival: the breakbeat lane This is where the year's best pure jungle sits, and almost all of it flows through one album. *Emotional Junglist* arrived on 17 July 2026 via Hijinxx / Island, 15 tracks that open with "Feelingz Go Numb" and close with "Boys in Blue". It went to No. 1 on the UK Dance Albums Chart and No. 30 on the UK Albums Chart, which for a jungle record is a genuinely remarkable crossover into the mainstream album market. The critical response backed the numbers. Writing in The Guardian, Aimee Cliff called it an "ambitiously expansive and quintessentially gen Z project that puts jungle in conversation with a myriad of other genres". Pitchfork's Will Pritchard wrote that it "pushes jungle music into fresh, vulnerable territory". NME's Alex Rigotti said it "expands her sonic palette and bears the rawest parts of her psyche". Read together, those three reviews describe the same thing: a jungle record that refuses to be only a jungle record. The singles are the entry points, and they trace the album's arc across the year. "Danger" arrived first, in late March 2026, the lead that set the tone. "Boys in Blue" followed in late April, the track that would eventually close the album. "Vertical" landed on 4 June. Then "Get Me Down", featuring Jorja Smith, dropped on 10 July, a week before the album, and it is the one that best shows the crossover instinct at work: a jungle producer pulling a soul and R&B voice onto a breakbeat and making both sound at home. If you want a single sequence that explains why 2026 was Nia Archives' year, it is those four in order. Context matters here too, because Nia Archives is the visible peak of a much deeper scene. She runs the label Up Ya Archives, launched on 24 April 2025 with a self-described focus on "everything new gen junglism", a useful map of the underground beneath her. Tim Reaper, of Future Retro London, is the central figure in the modern jungle underground, a prolific producer and a frequent collaborator with Coco Bryce, the pair having released together on records like *MYORFR001* in 2024. SHERELLE and NAINA founded Hooversound Recordings in 2020 as a hub for the 160-plus bpm end of jungle and footwork, and it remains one of the engines driving the sound forward. Miami New Times traced the whole arc neatly as running "from Sully and Tim Reaper to Sherelle and Nia Archives", which is exactly the underground-to-mainstream pipeline this lane represents. The best jungle of 2026 is not one album. It is one album on the Mercury shortlist and a whole scene standing behind it. ## Mainstream and crossover DnB: the main-stage lane The other lane is louder, bigger and built for the festival main stage, and Chase & Status own it. Their two headline singles of 2026 are the ones to know. "Through The Pain", featuring Pozer, was released on 10 March 2026 through EMI, and it is the more chart-facing of the pair. "Disgruntled", featuring J Hus & IRAH, followed in late July 2026, pulling one of British rap's biggest voices onto a drum and bass record. Both extend a formula the duo have spent years perfecting: the drum and bass drop as the delivery system for a roll-call of vocalists from the grime, dancehall and rap worlds. That formula has a clear origin point, and it is the track everything since builds on. "Baddadan", credited to Chase & Status & Bou featuring IRAH, Flowdan, Trigga & Takura, was released on 27 July 2023 and peaked at No. 5 in the UK. A jump-up drum and bass tune with four MCs on it, going Top 5 in the singles chart, is the moment the crossover template was proven at scale, and the 2026 singles are its direct descendants. Chase & Status' standing in the wider industry is not in doubt either: they won the BRIT Award for Producer of the Year in 2024, which is the establishment signing off on the same crossover instinct. Wikipedia's discography lists two further 2026 Chase & Status singles, "Doin' It More" featuring Blade Brown and "Homework" with Lancey Foux. We can confirm the titles but not the exact dates or labels to our standard, so treat those as on the radar rather than fixed entries. What is not in doubt is the shape of the lane: mainstream DnB in 2026 is a vocal-led, feature-heavy, chart-and-festival machine, and Chase & Status are its clearest engine. ## Jump-up and the Gossip sound: Bou's lane Sitting between the two lanes, and pulling from both, is jump-up: the high-energy, bassline-driven, party-first strand of drum and bass, the sound of a full dancefloor rather than a listening room. Its most prominent current name is Bou. He runs his own label, Gossip, a home for the jump-up sound, and he is the "& Bou" on "Baddadan", which means he has a co-credit on the single that rewrote what a DnB crossover could do commercially. That is a strong position: underground credibility and a Top 5 hit on the same CV. Jump-up is also where the geography of the scene gets interesting, because Bou is a Manchester-associated figurehead and the city has become a genuine hub for this end of the music. If you want the full picture of the man and the Gossip operation, our profile on [Bou and the jump-up takeover](https://www.mneemo.com/blog/bou-dj-real-name-drum-and-bass-2026/) goes deeper than a tracks list can, and it sits naturally alongside our wider look at [Manchester's club scene](https://www.mneemo.com/blog/best-manchester-clubs-2026/), which is where a lot of this sound gets tested on a proper system before it travels. ## Soundsystem and bass adjacencies No honest account of jungle and DnB in 2026 stops at the genre's own borders, because the soundsystem culture underneath it is shared with a whole family of UK bass music. The clearest recent example is Hamdi, whose breakout "Skanka" carried UK garage, grime and 140 soundsystem energy onto festival main stages and became one of the defining bass tracks of the era. It is neither a jungle nor a drum and bass record, but it comes from the same lineage of sub-heavy, system-first British music, and it helps explain where the weight in a jungle set actually comes from. Our profile on [Hamdi's UK soundsystem bass](https://www.mneemo.com/blog/hamdi-skanka-uk-bass-producer-2026/) lays out that story in full. The living home of that culture is Notting Hill Carnival, where the soundsystem is the instrument and the street is the venue. Jungle and DnB owe a direct debt to the reggae and dub soundsystems Carnival was built on. We have mapped the corners in our guide to [Carnival soundsystem culture](https://www.mneemo.com/blog/notting-hill-carnival-2026-sound-systems/), essential reading if you want to hear bass the way the pioneers intended it. For the parallel story in the other great British breakbeat family, our companion piece on [the best UK garage tracks of 2026](https://www.mneemo.com/blog/best-uk-garage-tracks-2026/) covers the 4/4, 130bpm cousin of everything here; the two lists are kept deliberately distinct. ## The tracks in full: 2026 quick reference Here is the year condensed to the hard facts, jungle lane first, then the mainstream DnB lane, with the crossover template that started it for context. - **Nia Archives, "Danger":** jungle single, lead from *Emotional Junglist*, Hijinxx / Island, late March 2026. - **Nia Archives, "Boys in Blue":** jungle single and album closer, Hijinxx / Island, late April 2026. - **Nia Archives, "Vertical":** jungle single, Hijinxx / Island, 4 June 2026. - **Nia Archives, "Get Me Down" featuring Jorja Smith:** jungle-into-soul crossover single, Hijinxx / Island, 10 July 2026. - **Nia Archives, *Emotional Junglist*:** the album itself, 15 tracks, 17 July 2026, No. 1 UK Dance Albums, No. 30 UK Albums, 2026 Mercury shortlist. - **Chase & Status, "Through The Pain" featuring Pozer:** mainstream DnB single, EMI, 10 March 2026. - **Chase & Status, "Disgruntled" featuring J Hus & IRAH:** mainstream DnB single, late July 2026. - **Chase & Status & Bou, "Baddadan" featuring IRAH, Flowdan, Trigga & Takura:** the 2023 crossover template, No. 5 UK, released 27 July 2023, included for context rather than as a 2026 track. Two things that list makes obvious. First, the jungle lane is one artist doing extraordinary work, while the mainstream lane is one act operating a well-oiled feature machine, and both produced some of the year's biggest breakbeat moments. Second, look at the labels: Hijinxx / Island and EMI. These are not underground white labels. The biggest jungle and DnB tracks of 2026 came out through major-label infrastructure, which is the clearest possible measure of how far the music has travelled. ## The infrastructure behind the sound A scene needs more than tracks. It needs the platforms that break them, and UK drum and bass has built a serious one. DnB Allstars, the trading name of DNBA Entertainment Ltd founded by Joshua Paul Williams, has grown from a media channel into genuine infrastructure: label, events and one of the most-watched shop windows the genre has. If you want to understand how a track gets from a producer's laptop to a festival main stage, the platform layer is where it happens, and we have written up [the DnB Allstars story](https://www.mneemo.com/blog/dnb-allstars-uk-drum-and-bass-label-festival-story/) in full. We have a stake in this ourselves, which we will be upfront about. Our own release "Facile" came out through that same ecosystem, and the account of how [a forgotten demo became a DnB Allstars release](https://www.mneemo.com/blog/mneemo-facile-flash-e4teen-dnb-allstars-story/) is the most honest thing we can offer about how records actually get placed in this scene. We are not reviewing from the outside. We are in it, which is the whole point of a collective's list rather than a chart aggregator's. ## Where to hear these tracks live in 2026 A jungle or DnB track only really makes sense on a system, at volume, with a crowd, so the last question is where. The Warehouse Project in Manchester is the obvious answer for scale, a season built to take exactly this kind of breakbeat weight; our guide to [The Warehouse Project 2026](https://www.mneemo.com/blog/warehouse-project-2026-lineup-dates-guide/) covers the lineup and dates. For the roots of the sound rather than its commercial peak, Notting Hill Carnival's soundsystems remain unmatched, the place where the bass lineage that jungle grew out of is still the main event. And across the year, dedicated DnB nights and platforms like DnB Allstars keep the music running in clubs between the festival headlines. The pattern to notice is that jungle and DnB in 2026 are no longer a niche you have to go looking for. They are on the Mercury shortlist, in the singles chart, on major labels and on festival main stages, while the underground that feeds all of it keeps turning over at 160-plus bpm in the smaller rooms. That convergence, the underground and the mainstream finally sharing a stage, is the real story of the best jungle and DnB tracks of 2026. ## FAQ **What are the best jungle and DnB tracks of 2026 so far?** On the jungle side, the standouts are Nia Archives' *Emotional Junglist* singles: "Danger", "Boys in Blue", "Vertical" and "Get Me Down" featuring Jorja Smith. On the mainstream DnB side, the two headline tracks are Chase & Status' "Through The Pain" featuring Pozer, released 10 March 2026, and "Disgruntled" featuring J Hus & IRAH, released late July 2026. Together they cover both lanes of the year. **What is the difference between jungle and drum and bass?** Both are breakbeat music sitting around 160 to 174bpm, and the words are often used interchangeably. Jungle, from the early-to-mid 90s, leans on chopped breaks, sub-heavy reggae and ragga influences, and a direct soundsystem lineage. Drum and bass is the broader, often cleaner and more produced evolution that followed. Resident Advisor's documentary "What Makes Something Jungle?" is a good primer on the distinction. **Is jungle making a comeback in 2026?** Yes. The revival has been building since the early 2020s, and in 2026 it reached the establishment: Nia Archives' *Emotional Junglist* was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize. This followed her 2024 debut *Silence Is Loud*, which was reported as the first jungle album nominated for the Mercury in 26 years. Two albums, two major moments, from a form long shut out of that conversation. **When did Nia Archives release *Emotional Junglist*?** It was released on 17 July 2026 through Hijinxx / Island. The album runs to 15 tracks, opening with "Feelingz Go Numb" and closing with "Boys in Blue". It reached No. 1 on the UK Dance Albums Chart and No. 30 on the UK Albums Chart, a notable crossover for a jungle record, and went on to be shortlisted for the 2026 Mercury Prize. **What is Chase & Status' biggest DnB track of 2026?** Their two headline 2026 singles are "Through The Pain" featuring Pozer, released 10 March 2026 on EMI, and "Disgruntled" featuring J Hus & IRAH, released late July 2026. Both extend the crossover formula of their 2023 single "Baddadan", made with Bou, which peaked at No. 5 in the UK and proved a feature-heavy DnB track could go Top 5. **Who are the key jungle revival artists to know?** Nia Archives is the mainstream face and the artist who put jungle on the Mercury shortlist. The underground drivers behind her include Tim Reaper of Future Retro London, SHERELLE and NAINA of Hooversound Recordings, and Coco Bryce, all building on heritage figures like Congo Natty. That underground-to-mainstream pipeline, from producers like Sully and Tim Reaper up to Nia Archives, is the shape of the revival. **What is jump-up drum and bass and who leads it in 2026?** Jump-up is the high-energy, bassline-driven, party-focused strand of drum and bass, built for a full dancefloor rather than a listening room. Bou is one of its biggest current names. He runs the Gossip label and featured on "Baddadan", giving him both underground credibility and a co-credit on one of the genre's biggest crossover hits. He is closely associated with Manchester, a hub for the sound. **Did a jungle album really get Mercury-nominated?** Yes. Nia Archives' *Emotional Junglist* is one of 12 albums on the 2026 Mercury Prize shortlist, alongside names like Dave, RAYE, Loyle Carner, Sam Fender and Paul McCartney. The winner is announced on 22 October 2026 at Newcastle's Utilita Arena, so at the time of writing the result is still open. Her 2024 debut had already broken a 26-year gap since the last jungle Mercury nomination. **Where can I hear jungle and DnB live in the UK in 2026?** The Warehouse Project in Manchester is the standout for festival-scale DnB, with a season built to carry it. Notting Hill Carnival's soundsystems are the best place to hear the roots of the sound, the reggae and dub lineage jungle grew out of. And across the year, dedicated club nights and platforms such as DnB Allstars keep the music running between the big festival dates. **Jungle or drum and bass, which is bigger right now?** Mainstream DnB, led by acts like Chase & Status, has the chart positions and the festival-headline reach. Jungle has the critical and cultural momentum, above all through Nia Archives and the Mercury shortlist. The most interesting part of 2026 is not which is bigger but how far the two have converged, sharing labels, stages and, increasingly, an audience. *Facts in this piece were checked against current sources in August 2026. If something has moved since, that is the nature of a living scene.* --- Source: https://www.mneemo.com/blog/best-jungle-dnb-tracks-2026/ · © HOUSE OF MNEEMO. Written by MNEEMO (Yaroslav Gorovoy).