The 21 Project is the third studio album by American country music artist Hunter Hayes, released in physical format on November 6, 2015 through Atlantic Nashville.

[2] The album includes five songs from his similarly-titled EP, 21, released earlier that year, as well as two new tracks.

[6][7] Hayes told Billboard that "this [current] music wasn't created with an album in mind," but his management team confirmed to the magazine that a conventional physical album was expected to be released in the fall of 2015.

[8] Hayes told country music blog The Boot that due to the way it developed, he's "trying not to call [The 21 Project] a record," but thinks of it more as a box set or an art project.

[9] According to him, the goal of the project was to "bring the focus back to the music," and to demonstrate how a song evolves "from its original form into something we play on stage.