Robbie Williams has been named an Album Icon for National Album Day 2026, with a new vinyl edition of Sing When You're Winning accompanying the announcement. The annual celebration takes place on Saturday, October 17. This year's Icons theme puts established records and the artists behind them at the centre of the conversation.
Williams joins PinkPantheress, Max Richter and Melanie C as an advocate for the album format. His particular title recognises a career that now includes 16 UK number-one albums. That gives the appointment a useful connection to the present: an artist can have a substantial back catalogue and still be adding to it.
Universal Music Recordings and Island Records are revisiting his third studio album as a limited-edition red-and-blue double LP. Pre-orders open on October 6 through participating retailers. The set plays at 45 RPM, as the original vinyl did, and is being presented as the album's first vinyl reissue and its first release on coloured vinyl. The format changes the object on the shelf; the record inside remains a familiar piece of Williams' history.
Originally released in August 2000, Sing When You're Winning contains Rock DJ, Supreme and the Kylie Minogue duet Kids. It became his third consecutive UK chart-topping album and spent three weeks at number one. Those singles make the record easy to recognise, but an album celebration also invites listeners to follow what happens between the hits.
That is where a reissue can become worthwhile beyond collecting. A favourite track often arrives in isolation now, followed by whichever song a playlist supplies next. Playing an album from the beginning asks for a different kind of attention. The change in mood between tracks, the pacing and the quieter passages all get a chance to register. Nobody needs a coloured pressing to do that, although a new edition can be a welcome excuse.
The announcement also follows Williams' return with Britpop earlier this year. Our coverage of the early Britpop release and his pursuit of a UK album record captured that forward momentum. Revisiting a 2000 album now puts two points in the same career beside each other, with room to hear what has changed and what has stayed recognisably his.
National Album Day is organised by the BPI and the entertainment retail association ERA. For a listener, the invitation can be much smaller than an industry-wide campaign: choose a record and give it an uninterrupted hour. Williams' appointment supplies an obvious candidate. The red and blue discs may catch the eye, but the better reason to return is to hear the whole album rather than rely on memories of its biggest singles.
