<p>We prove almost sure strong asymptotic freeness of i.i.d. random unitaries with the following law: sample a Haar unitary matrix of dimension <InlineEquation ID="IEq1"> <EquationSource Format="MATHML"><math> <mi>n</mi> </math></EquationSource> <EquationSource Format="TEX">$n$</EquationSource> </InlineEquation> and then send this unitary into an irreducible representation of <InlineEquation ID="IEq2"> <EquationSource Format="MATHML"><math> <mi mathvariant="normal">U</mi> <mo stretchy="false">(</mo> <mi>n</mi> <mo stretchy="false">)</mo> </math></EquationSource> <EquationSource Format="TEX">$\mathrm{U}(n)$</EquationSource> </InlineEquation>. The strong convergence holds as long as the irreducible representation arises from a pair of partitions of total size at most <InlineEquation ID="IEq3"> <EquationSource Format="MATHML"><math> <msup> <mi>n</mi> <mrow> <mfrac> <mrow> <mn>1</mn> </mrow> <mn>42</mn> </mfrac> <mo>−</mo> <mi>ε</mi> </mrow> </msup> </math></EquationSource> <EquationSource Format="TEX">$n^{\frac{1}{42}-\varepsilon }$</EquationSource> </InlineEquation> and is uniform in this regime.</p><p>Previously this was known for partitions of total size up to <InlineEquation ID="IEq4"> <EquationSource Format="MATHML"><math> <mo>≍</mo> <mo>log</mo> <mi>n</mi> <mo stretchy="false">/</mo> <mo>log</mo> <mo>log</mo> <mi>n</mi> </math></EquationSource> <EquationSource Format="TEX">$\asymp \log n/\log \log n$</EquationSource> </InlineEquation> by a result of Bordenave and Collins.</p>