Street date: October 2, 2026 · Announced July 29, 2026 · Apple Corps / UMe
The Rubber Soul Special Edition arrives in several very different packages, and the names don’t make it obvious which one you actually want. Here’s the honest breakdown — what each edition is, what you’re paying for, and who it’s for. We update this page as details are confirmed; anything we haven’t verified is marked TBC.
🐮 Vinyl Version Verified
Every edition on this page is checked against label announcements, distributor solicitations, and pressing details before we describe it. Anything we can’t verify is marked TBC — we don’t guess, and we don’t invent scarcity. The allocation status below is the honest state of our own ordering, updated as it changes.
Allocation status: NOT STOCKING
We’re letting this pressing go. The distributor ordering window for the October 2 street date closed on August 7 — before our shop opened — and we won’t chase marked-up copies on the secondary market to resell to you. The decoder below still tells you exactly which edition to buy, wherever you buy it. The list stays open: if a second pressing or a new allocation window appears, everyone on it hears first.
The editions, decoded
| Standard 1LP | Half-Speed / Zoetrope | 5LP + 7″ Super Deluxe Box | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | The new stereo mix on a single LP | Audiophile-leaning pressing with a zoetrope visual element | The full sessions treatment: new mix, outtakes, demos, plus a 7″ |
| Who it’s for | You want to play the record. The listener’s copy. | You care about pressing quality, or you want the shelf piece | Completists and Beatles historians — this is the archive, not just the album |
| Mastering | New mix (engineer credits TBC) | Half-speed cut (facility TBC) | Same new mix + session material |
| Price band | Typical new-1LP pricing | Premium single-disc pricing | Box-set pricing — expect a serious number |
| Risk of missing it | Low — standard editions restock | Medium — visual variants tend to be limited runs | Highest — deluxe boxes are pressed once and rarely repressed |
Two dates matter, not one
October 2 is the release date, but the ordering that decided who gets copies happened weeks earlier — distributor windows for limited editions close a month or more before street date, and this one closed August 7. That’s the reason this page was a waitlist and not a preorder button: we don’t take money for records we haven’t been allocated. We weren’t allocated this one, so no money changes hands here.