U2 Sets a 2027 Stadium Tour, With US Dates Still to Come

U2 is going back to stadiums. On Oct. 15, the band announced the Carnaval De Luz Presents: The Greatest Show On Earth World Tour, released a new single of the same name and confirmed the first six dates of 2027, all in Latin America and all with Beck as the opening act. For American fans, the most important line in the announcement is the one without dates attached: [U2.com](http://U2.com) says additional 2027 shows for Europe and North America "are set to be announced in the coming weeks."

Here is what has been confirmed, how the ticketing works, what the band says it is building, and what is still unknown.

The first six dates

The tour opens Feb. 23, 2027, at Estadio GNP Seguros in Mexico City, with a second show there on Feb. 26. It moves to Estádio MorumBIS in São Paulo on March 10 and 12, then to Estadio River Plate in Buenos Aires on March 23 and 25. [U2.com](http://U2.com) describes those as the only three Latin American cities the tour will visit next year.

Variety reported that the tour is produced by Live Nation and is set to continue through 2027 "and beyond." Billboard reports that Beck will open all six announced shows, while Variety put it more cautiously: Beck is the opener "at least for these initial shows."

One absence has drawn attention in South America. NME, citing the Chilean newspaper La Tercera, reported on Oct. 18 that U2 will skip Chile for the first time on a Latin American tour after negotiations that had been underway since 2025 did not produce an agreement. NME noted it has not been established whether the availability of Santiago's Estadio Nacional was the deciding factor, and the band has not commented publicly.

Presales and on-sale dates

Tickets go first to members of the band's site. According to [U2.com](http://U2.com), the subscriber presale opens Monday, Oct. 19, at 10 a.m. local time and closes Wednesday, Oct. 21, at 10 p.m. local time. Members in the Feedback group enter on Monday and members in the Hype group on Tuesday.

Mexico City also has a Ticketmaster artist presale after the [U2.com](http://U2.com) window, with registration that closed Sunday, Oct. 18, at 11:59 p.m. ET. General on-sale begins Thursday, Oct. 22, at 10 a.m. local time for São Paulo and Buenos Aires, and Friday, Oct. 23, at 10 a.m. local time for Mexico City.

None of the announcements we reviewed lists ticket prices. For buyers in the US, there is nothing to purchase yet; the practical step is to watch [U2.com](http://U2.com) for the North American routing.

What the band says the show will be

The band's joint statement, published by [U2.com](http://U2.com) and quoted by Rolling Stone and Billboard, frames the tour name as a challenge. "It's a dare, to ourselves as much as anyone, to try and have the best night of anybody's life," the band said. "A bit of showman, a bit of shaman, a riot of color, unreasonable guitar, bass and drums, and tunes you can hold onto."

[U2.com](http://U2.com) says the set list will draw from across the band's entire catalog. These will be U2's first stadium shows since The Joshua Tree Tour ended at DY Patil Stadium in Mumbai on Dec. 15, 2019, a run the band says drew almost 3 million fans. In between came the residency at Sphere in Las Vegas, which Billboard puts at 40 shows.

The lineup matters here. NME reports that drummer Larry Mullen Jr. will return to full-scale live performances after neck and back surgery, having missed the 2023 to 2024 Sphere residency. Consequence also describes the tour as marking his return and calls it the band's first world outing in eight years.

The song and the album

"The Greatest Show on Earth," co-written by the band and Brian Eno, is the third single from Carnaval De Luz, after "Street of Dreams" in July and "Silencio" in September. The video, directed by longtime collaborator Anton Corbijn and shot in the California desert, satirizes the band as a religious cult "where women do all the heavy lifting," according to [U2.com](http://U2.com).

Bono told Rolling Stone it is his favorite song on the album: "It's maybe our greatest song in a very long time." Variety's chief music critic, Chris Willman, heard it differently, calling the track "on the moodier side for U2," with lyrics that treat the phrase more ironically than the tour name suggests.

Carnaval De Luz, U2's 16th studio album, is due Nov. 13. [U2.com](http://U2.com) calls it the band's first album of new material in nine years, and NME points to 2017's Songs of Experience as the previous one. Billboard instead counts from 2023's Songs of Surrender, a collection of reworked older songs. [U2.com](http://U2.com) credits Jacknife Lee as producer.

Eno, Lanois and a Dolly Parton duet

The 12 tracks include several notable guests. [U2.com](http://U2.com) lists Eno co-writing and playing synthesizers on three songs, Martin Garrix co-writing "Glorify," Daniel Lanois on pedal steel for "Torn" and additional production from Ryan Tedder on "Silencio," and the track list credits Rosalía on "The Mirror Maker." The closer, "Torn," is a duet with Dolly Parton.

Bassist Adam Clayton told Rolling Stone the album is "an extraordinary collection of songs," and "the culmination of the work that everyone has been doing for 50 years."

Why the next announcement matters for the US

The timing is tied to a milestone. The Guardian noted that the album announcement came 50 years, to the week, after a 14-year-old Larry Mullen Jr. pinned a notice to the board at Mount Temple Comprehensive School in Dublin seeking musicians for a band. [U2.com](http://U2.com) says the band is also working on plans for a return home to Ireland.

The US remains one of U2's biggest markets. Billboard notes that the band has eight No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200 and two Hot 100 No. 1 singles, "With or Without You" and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," both in 1987.

What is not known yet: which American cities and stadiums are on the route, when those dates go on sale, what tickets will cost, and whether Beck stays on the bill beyond the first six shows. We will update this story when U2 announces its North American leg.

Sources

Cover photo: Petr (Happy24), Wikimedia Commons, [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U2_on_main_stage_Experience_and_Innocence_Tour_in_Berlin_8-31-18.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U2_on_main_stage_Experience_and_Innocence_Tour_in_Berlin_8-31-18.jpg) (CC BY 4.0).