London’s Southbank Centre will team up with ABBA The Museum in Stockholm to create an immersive exhibition charting the hit group’s journey as one of the world’s most iconic pop labels.

Opening at the Southbank Centre on 14 December, ABBA: Super Troupers will look at the rise of ABBA set against the socio-economic and political conditions of the time.

The exhibition, created in partnership with Entertainment Exhibition International AB, will feature previously unseen archive material including original costumes, handwritten notes, sketches, and personal photographs, music and instruments, plus album artwork, photography and film by notable collaborators such as film director Lasse Hallström.

For the first time, objects from ABBA The Museum and its private archives will be brought together in the UK, charting the band's individual careers, their Eurovision Song Contest win and their chart-topping runs in the 70s and 80s. Theatrical backdrops will also be used for the exhibition, with a hotel room, music studio and disco setting the stage to provide context for the ABBA story.

“Since our songs, which were written in the 70s, are still being played today it’s particularly interesting that the Southbank Centre exhibition is placing them in the temporal context in which they were created,” said ABBA member Björn Ulvaeus.

“We recorded Mamma Mia in 1975. What happened that year in the UK and in the world? One thing is for certain – it seems unbelievably long ago!”

The exhibition will build on the success of Southbank’s Roald Dahl exhibition between 2015-2016 and its Moomin exhibition, which debuted on 15 December last year and ran until 23 April.

The ABBA exhibition will launch as part of Southbank Centre’s Wintertime festival and the final month of Nordic Matters – a year-long programme of Nordic arts and culture running through 2017.