Alex Van Halen has announced that he is due to begin work on a new album with Toto guitarist Steve Lukather.

Speaking on Iron Maiden’s Nicko McBrain’s Metal Sticks podcast, the musician revealed, “I’m getting ready to do this record with Lukather and a couple of other people. It should be exciting.”

Alex Van Halen - Steve Lukather - Split - 2026

The drummer and co-founder of Van Halen has collaborated with Lukather on several past projects. Their most famous is Michael Jackson’s hit song, ‘Beat It’, on which Lukather plays the main riff, and Van Halen plays the solo.

This news comes as a surprise. Only last March, Lukather denied claims that he was set to play guitar on a new album by Van Halen.

At that time, Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf reported that Alex was working on a collection of unfinished Van Halen recordings, with Lukather involved in the project.

Alex commented on this, sharing, “Eddie [Van Halen] and Steve Lukather were very good friends and they often worked together. There is no one who can do this process with me as well as he can.”

Lukather responded with surprise, sharing, “Did Alex say that? Oh, in that case the news is true. Ed, Alex and I were very close for years. It is true that we worked on it together.”

Following this, Lukather clarified his response on Instagram, beginning, “For the record: Ever since Alex Van Halen dropped some we were gonna work together I think there is a huge misunderstanding. I will NOT EVER play a guitar note on a VH song ever!”

He added, “Al asked me to help him go through a ton of unfinished recordings of Al and Ed writing and recording that never saw the light of day. As of now thats all I got.

He also suggested that he has “too much love and respect for that,” after Eddie Van Halen passed away in 2020.

At the time of his passing, Lukather publicly grieved the guitarist, sharing with Metal Master Kingdom, “I loved the man. There’s nothing to argue about how great he was as a musician. I don’t have to. Who’s gonna argue? He was one of the greats to ever pick up rock and roll guitar — he changed everything. And he was my friend.”

Further details about the upcoming project have yet to be released.