They were one of the main staples of noughties music in the UK and Ireland and to celebrate 25 years of touring, Westlife have returned to the spotlight again.

The boy band has released a new song called Chariot, with an album following suit in February and a tour that will take them around the world next year.

“The Westlife story is fairy tale stuff and we’re very lucky and proud to be part of it”, Shane Filan tells Sky News at the Royal Albert Hall, where they have just performed for two nights.

“It took our breath away. We came out to the Royal Albert Hall thinking it might be a little bit more intimate than a big arena and just the sheer noise, the sheer screams from the women and everyone just having good fun.

“The support and love, we never felt it like we did in the room. It was amazing.”

Formed by their manager Louis Walsh in the late 1990s, the group originally consisted of Filan, Mark Feehily, Brian McFadden, Nicky Byrne and Kian Egan.

McFadden left the group in 2004 to pursue a solo career, but the other four have remained together.

Due to health issues, Feehily can’t join the celebrations, but representatives say he is still very much part of the band and features on their new music and upcoming album.

History-making chart successes

Westlife are joint third with Sir Cliff Richard and Ed Sheeran for the most UK number one singles in history, just behind Elvis and The Beatles.

In their first 18 months, they secured seven of those top spots thanks to songs like Flying Without Wings, I Have A Dream and If I Let You Go.

Reflecting on the years gone by, Byrne says the nostalgia hits harder than ever.

“You see the generations coming to the shows, people letting their hair down, people remembering the songs from their first kiss, the first dance, all those special things that music does,” he says.

“Not even just for the fans – we’re having the time of our lives.

“We’re singing these songs up there… I remember breaking the wardrobe door when we were promoting Swear It Again, and now we’re singing it in front of the Royal Albert Hall and look, I mean, just look at this place.”

Famous fans and furniture

For Byrne, finding out about fans of their music never gets old, and their song Flying Without Wings seems to be a key component of their stature in music.

“I did Soccer Aid with Tom Grennan recently, and he was talking all about how he grew up listening to Westlife – his dad is Irish. Big Zuu, who scored the winning goal, he was like, ‘Flying Without Wings, man, is the best song I’ve ever heard’.”

It’s the same song Sheeran first learned to play guitar on, and years later, he began writing songs for the group, including their latest single Chariot.

Oddly, it’s their choice in furniture that receives just as much attention as their music over the years, with four stools becoming synonymous with the group.

Stemming from their lack of dancing skills, according to Simon Cowell at least, they chose to change it up and simply rise from their chair on the key change of the song.

“We are stool connoisseurs. It’s become a very strange thing and it’s nearly as big as our music. It’s genuinely as big as You Raise Me Up,” Filan laughs.

Keeping their kids grounded

As the band continued to release music, each member settled down and had families of their own. Now their children are around the same age they were when they first started as a group.

Egan says they all made a conscious decision to raise the next generation away from the spotlight.

“We don’t want our kids growing up in this world and at the end of the day they are privileged, so it’s really important for us to keep them grounded and to try and give them as much of a natural kind of upbringing as they possibly can, and I think that’s why we choose to bring them up in the same places that we grew up,” he adds.

Byrne chimes in jokingly: “Slightly bigger houses, though!”

It was this tour that caused Byrne’s children to realise the extent of their father’s fame.

“I have twin boys who are 18 and a half, and the middle girl is 12. So last week, when the tour went on sale in Ireland, and we went from five nights in the 3Arena to 13, and from Belfast it went from three right up to seven, and the boys are looking at me, going, ‘You’re doing 13 nights in the 3Arena’.

“And it is even me looking at them going, ‘Yeah, right’. It hits you, it hits you there in a way, to be honest with you. I got a little bit cooler then.”

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Running from September 2026, Westlife 25 – The Anniversary World Tour, will kick off in Dublin for 13 shows before heading to Aberdeen, Glasgow, Newcastle, Leeds, Sheffield, London, Brighton, Bournemouth, Birmingham, Cardiff, Manchester and then Belfast for seven nights.

Gigs in Paris, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Cologne and Zurich will follow.

Tickets for Westlife’s UK tour dates go on sale this Friday.

Latin America’s electric mobility transition is kicking into high gear, and Brazil-based Vammo is emerging as its battery-swapping champion. The São Paulo startup just closed a $45 million Series B funding round led by Ecosystem Integrity Fund, with backing from Qualcomm Ventures, 2150, Construct Capital, and others – positioning the company to expand across the region’s megacities and build what it calls the backbone of Latin America’s clean transport network.

Founded in 2022, Vammo has rapidly become the region’s leading battery-swapping platform, offering riders an all-in-one ecosystem that bundles electric motorcycles, financing, maintenance, and a growing network of 150 swap stations. Its fleet of 5,000 electric motorcycles already serves riders working for major delivery platforms like Uber, 99, Rappi, and iFood – with a waiting list still forming.

The company says its subscription model lets users access a vehicle and unlimited swapping at 30% lower cost than gasoline alternatives.

It’s a story we’re seeing playing out around the world, with similar cost-savings for battery-swapping electric motorcycles being reported in Asia, Europe, and Africa. Now Vammo is leading that charge in Latin America, and is set to significantly expand operations on the back of its latest funding round.

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Earlier this year, Vammo surpassed its one millionth battery swap milestone.

Unlike many competitors that depend on off-the-shelf components, Vammo builds everything in-house – from battery packs and charging hardware to its own IoT-enabled software platform. That proprietary technology, designed specifically for Latin American conditions, gives Vammo a major head start in the region’s still-nascent battery-swapping race.

With this new funding, the company plans to expand manufacturing and R&D in Brazil, investing more than R$500 million to ramp up production in Manaus and develop new hybrid ethanol-electric motorcycles that combine two of Brazil’s cleanest energy sources.

For riders, the economics are compelling: energy costs per kilometer are about 80% lower than gasoline, and maintenance savings reach 50%. Add Brazil’s 90% renewable electricity grid – the cleanest among G20 countries – and each swapped battery delivers a climate dividend few regions can match.

Electrek’s Take

Battery swapping makes perfect sense in cities where riders need constant uptime and limited space makes charging tricky. Vammo is proving the model can scale in Latin America – and not just in theory. Thousands of riders are already using it daily. As more countries follow Brazil’s example, expect battery swapping to become a cornerstone of clean urban mobility across the continent. São Paulo may soon do for battery-swap bikes what Taipei did for Gogoro – turn a smart idea into an unstoppable movement.

Now, if North America could just catch up with the more developed markets like South America, Africa, and Asia, that’d be really something.