George Clinton Teases 2026 Tour, With a Newly Constructed P-Funk Mothership Ready to Soar

Keep your eyes to the sky: George Clinton is planning to land the Parliament-Funkadelic Mothership again in 2026.

With the original stagecraft stage prop residing in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, Clinton and longtime P-Funk collaborator Vivian Chew of New York-based Chew Entertainment tell Billboard “a new and improved version” of the legendary spacecraft stage prop is being constructed at the Rock Lititz production campus in southeastern Pennsylvania. “We know it’s going to be crazy,” Chew says. “It’s something people are going to be in awe of. Dr. Funkenstein will be coming out of the Mothership again in a very new way. George is going to take this thing around the world.”

Tour dates, she adds, will be announced “shortly,” though Chew did predict that “I think your first sighting will be next summer.”

The Mothership was introduced, conceptually, on Parliament’s album Mothership Connection, which was released 50 years ago this month. In the science fiction-themed title track, the group proclaims that, “We have returned to claim the pyramids/Partying on the mothership…Gettin’ down in 3D/Light year groovin’.”

“I was a big fan of Star Trek and all that,” Clinton explained some years ago. “We were all about putting Black people in places nobody ever thought they’d be…like outer space, so that’s what we did.” The Clinton-produced album, which features the hit “Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker),” reached No. 13 on the Billboard 200 chart and was certified platinum. In 2011 it became part of the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry. Billboard recently named Parliament/Funkadelic one of the 50 best rock bands of all time.

The Mothership gained legendary status in 1976, however, when a physical incarnation, designed by Jules Fisher, became part of the P-Funk Earth Tour stage show. It was lowered from the ceiling at the start of the show, with Clinton emerging from its bowels in his guise as Dr. Funkenstein. “It was spectacular. There was nothing like it at the time,” recalls David Libert, who booked Clinton during the ‘70s after serving as tour manager for Alice Cooper. “The logistics around it were crazy, but any audience that saw it was just blown away.”

The Mothership was sold during the early ‘80s but eventually recovered and refurbished for a 1996 P-Funk All Stars concert in New York’s Central Park. It also appeared at a handful of other dates, including Woodstock ’99, before landing with the Smithsonian. “I’m loving the fact that it’s still that valid of a concept, and I’m still around to actually be part of this next journey,” Clinton says now. “It’s a good thing; the first Mothership is in the Smithsonian, and here we are backing it up with a new version.”

Clinton adds that the Mothership’s reappearance will likely be accompanied by some new music. “I’ve definitely got some fresh funk coming in and out of that, very soon,” he says, “very interesting stuff. I can’t talk about it now. It’s going to be interesting.” Clinton was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in June after receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in January. He’s currently embroiled in a lawsuit against former business associate Armen Boladian and his assorted music companies to regain ownership of his music and copyrights.

Before the new Mothership takes flight, Chew will be presenting “Symphonic PFunk: Celebrating the Music of Parliament Funkadelic” on Jan. 31 at the Detroit Opera House, with arrangements by her husband, Dancing With the Stars music director Ray Chew, who will also conduct the orchestra that night. With guest performers Nona Hendryx, Vernon Reid and Rahsaan Patterson, it’s intended as a tribute, but Clinton says he might “get up there and jam when I feel it.”

“This was always my dream,” Clinton continues, “to carry on to that point of respectability and to always try to prove that we were worthy of that. It is all worthy of that. I go back to Motown itself…. All that music needs to be classical, orchestrated and cataloged, curated for the next 100 years. I think we did our part in creating something that lives up to that. And we kept it going.”