Abba decides to Give it, Give it, Give its fans another album 

The pop group Abba in Brighton, where they won the Eurovision Song Contest for Sweden with 'Waterloo', sung by Anni-Frid Lyngstad (Frida), right, and Agnetha Fältskog (Anna). The other group members, Benny Andersson, right, and Bjorn Ulvaeus, composed the song.

One of the most anticipated comebacks in pop culture has finally come to pass: the return of Abba.

Forty years after the bitter songs written in the wake of two band divorces for their last album, 1981’s The Visitors, the Swedish pop quartet has reunited for Voyage, an album of new songs that will be released on November 5 – including, they say, a Christmas song. Two tracks from it, the stately and epic ballad 'I Still Have Faith in You' and the shimmying 'Don’t Shut Me Down', are out now.

The group – Benny Andersson, Agnetha Fältskog, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Björn Ulvaeus – have also announced a new concert experience in London, also called Voyage, beginning in May 2022. Digital versions of themselves (not holograms, their team asserted) will appear nightly alongside a 10-piece live band at a new 3,000-capacity venue in the city’s Olympic Park, called the Abba Arena.

Tickets go on general sale on September 7.

Lyngstad said of their reunion: “Such joy it was to work with the group again – I am so happy with what we have made,” and called Andersson and Ulvaeus “exceptionally talented, truly genius songwriters”.

Ulvaeus said of Fältskog and Lyngstad: “I was completely floored by the way they delivered those songs,” with Andersson saying: “I think hearing Frida and Agnetha singing again is hard to beat.” 

Andersson added: 

We’re truly sailing in uncharted waters. With the help of our younger selves, we travel into the future.” 

Abba’s digital avatars were created using motion capture technology, similar to that used by Andy Serkis and others to portray CGI beasts in Hollywood movies: the group was filmed in skintight suits for the lifelike recreations.

Abba’s digital avatars were created using motion capture technology

Wayne McGregor, resident artist at London’s Royal Ballet, choreographed the band’s performance, and an 850-strong team from George Lucas-founded effects company Industrial Light & Magic designed and animated the de-aged avatars from the footage.

Both the concert and album have been mooted for some time. The avatar concept – or “Abbatars” as Ulvaeus has called them – was announced in 2016 by music manager Simon Fuller (who is not involved with the 2022 iteration). 

In 2017, Andersson elaborated on the project, saying: “It will take a bit of time, it takes time to digitalise a face. It’s fun that it’s so technologically advanced.” 

In 2018, a TV show featuring the avatars was announced, co-produced by the BBC and NBC, which has not yet been aired.

The group also announced that meeting up for the project had “an unexpected consequence. We all felt that, after some 35 years, it could be fun to join forces again and go into the recording studio. So we did. And it was like time had stood still and we had only been away on a short holiday. An extremely joyful experience.” 

Two songs were initially written and recorded, including 'I Still Have Faith in You', but their release was pushed back to early 2019, then late 2019, but never emerged. Since then, the group have continued writing and recording, eventually ending up with a full album of material.

The reunion also brings two pairs of once-married couples back together. Lyngstad and Andersson were engaged in 1971, the same year that Fältskog and Ulvaeus married, but by 1981, both couples had divorced within a year of each other. Their romantic strife was explored with great candour in songs such as 'The Winner Takes It All', and in the psychodramas of their final album in 1981.

The group fizzled out in 1983 without an official break-up announcement. In the years since, Fältskog released 12 solo albums, most recently A in 2013; Lyngstad released three albums and made occasional one-off recordings.

Andersson and Ulvaeus co-wrote numerous musicals, including Chess with Tim Rice, and in 2013 they worked with EDM producer Avicii to compose the theme for the Eurovision Song Contest, which they had won with 'Waterloo' in 1974.

The group have long denied they would ever perform live again. In 2014, Lyngstad said: 

We only have one answer and that is no … No amount of money would change our minds. Maybe we sometimes say it would be good to do a song together again, just a recording and nothing else.” 

In 2016, they did perform one song together at a party to celebrate 50 years of the Andersson-Ulvaeus songwriting partnership: 'The Way Old Friends Do'.

Speaking at a London launch event for Voyage, Ulvaeus said the band was as close as they ever were. “It is incredible to be where we are, no imagination could dream up that. To release a new album after 40 years and to still be the best of friends … to still have a total loyalty. Who has experienced that? Nobody … It is such fun and we have been longing for this for such a long time.” 

Why do the project now? “We wanted to do it before we were dead,” he said.

• Guardian Service