In January 2007, the auditions for the new singer’s recruitment were over. At the same time, the studio diaries about the recordings of the new album were updated regularly. The English version of the Nightwish Book “Once Upon a Nightwish” was published at the end of April. At last, the rest of Europe was to know the detailed story of the band. The North American tour was already announced for October 2007 while the album was not even ready. As soon as May, some concerts like the one in Springfield were quickly sold out.

While the fans were waiting for the end of May to know the name of the new singer, the media started to get interested and many rumors appeared. Nightwish announced that the name of Tarja's successor would be revealed on May 30th, along with the release of a single ("Eva") from the new album. Online music stores got ready to launch the sale of the single on that very day but a mistake was then made: on May 22nd, Virginmedia published a 30 second extract from the song, in which the voice of the unknown singer could be heard. And to make it worse, the website launched the sale of the single earlier than planned! Therefore, Nightwish had to speed up their schedule and announced the name of the singer on May 24th, along with their own extract of the song.

May 24th 2007 was a big day for the new singer of Nightwish since her identity was finally revealed. She is the Swedish Anette Olzon. Tuomas claimed that his choice was almost made since the beginning of the auditions. This announcement is followed by the release of the single “Eva” on internet whose profits were given to a charity for children. Along with this, the dates of the first part of the European tour planned for November and December 2007 were announced.

With the name of the new singer revealed, things sped up again: interviews were made (mostly with Tuomas and Anette), infos on the new album were also given and concert dates were given every day.

In June, the title of the new album was revealed. Everybody then talked about "Dark Passion Play". The band published all the info the fans had been waiting for (album cover, tracklisting…) and also announced the name of the second single: "Amaranth". In July, the first promo tours for press started along with signing sessions. In August, the second single "Amaranth" – whose video was directed by Anti Jokinen (who also directed the DVD "End of an Era" and the video "Nemo") - was released. The single was a big success even if some fans found it a little too "commercial". In September, the single was doing very good in the European charts and particularly in Finland, Spain and Hungary where "Amaranth" was number 1 (Nuclear Blast's habit to release many different formats is probably a key to its success).

European shows were then finally announced. While the album was still not released, "Bye Bye Beautiful" was announced as the third single from the album and promoted with a video by Anti Jokinen, once again. Many pre-listenings of the album took place - such as the one organized by Nightwish-France in Paris, where 300 people were lucky enough take part of the event.

The release of « Dark Passion Play » at the end of September was followed by 3 "secret" concerts given by the band in Finland and Germany. The band was playing under a different name but the fans were not fooled and did not miss these shows. The album was a commercial success and even exceeded the sales of "Once" – "Dark Passion Play" was number one in the charts in Finland, Germany, Switzerland, and number 6 in France.

The promotion of the album continued with the release of an unexpected fourth single for Christmas - "Erämaan Viimeinen", which is a version of "Last Of The Wilds" with lyrics. The lyrics are sung by Jonsu who is the singer of Indica, a Finnish pop band which was not very famous at the time. 2007 ended very well for Nightwish which come back was a great success, thanks to Anette and "Dark Passion Play".