Are The Rolling Stones reprising their “Cockroaches” pseudonym?

Life holds its truisms: you can’t kill a cockroach, and you can’t get the Rolling Stones to stop poking fun. After posters popped up around London today, fans began speculating whether the Stones were heralding their first new album since 2023’s Hackney Diamonds, or even a series of intimate live shows. Not that the posters themselves said so: the pink flyers appear to advertise something called “The Cockroaches” and offer a barcode to a site called thecockroaches.com, which is itself bare with the exception of an opportunity for a newsletter signup. “Who the Fuck Are the Cockroaches?,” the landing page reads.

Encyclopedic fans saw something in the posters. “I could be falling for an elaborate April Fools’ hoax, or I could have dropped down a rabbit hole of obscure Stones folklaw, but this would appear to be some form of cryptic @therollingstones announcement, right?” asked Matt Everitt on Instagram today. The BBC 6 Music broadcaster might be on to something. In the 1970s and ‘80s, the Stones played a duo of gigs under the Cockroaches moniker. Eagle-eyed observers also noted that the font on the poster, as well as the explicit wording of its newsletter invite, echo an iconic statement once made by Keith Richards via a T-shirt that with “Who the fuck is Mick Jagger?” printed on it. 

Moreover, Ronnie Wood, a longtime guitarist for the Stones, announced in a 2025 interview that the band’s new album was “done” and set for release in 2026. The biggest clue, however, is hidden in the site’s privacy policy: thecockroaches.com’s “Policy” button takes visitors to Universal Music Group’s Privacy Policy page. UMG, conveniently, is the Stones’s record label. But hey, even if we’re not getting some new Rolling Stones action, at least there’s a new entomological band on the way with a good marketing team behind them.

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