41 nights: the Oasis reunion, by the numbers

On 22 August 2009, Oasis headlined V Festival at Weston Park in Staffordshire. Six days later, at the Rock en Seine festival near Paris, they pulled out just before they were due on stage, after a backstage altercation that, as the BBC later put it, began with Liam throwing a plum at his older brother's head. That night Noel posted a statement:

“It's with some sadness and great relief to tell you that I quit Oasis tonight… People will write and say what they like, but I simply could not go on working with Liam a day longer.”

— Noel Gallagher, 28 August 2009

That Staffordshire set became the last Oasis show for almost sixteen years.

The next one came on 4 July 2025 in Cardiff, 5,795 days later. Then came forty more.

The opening night came the day after Liverpool footballer Diogo Jota and his brother André Silva were killed in a car crash in Spain. Inside the stadium, the screens showed his name and his number 20 on a red Liverpool shirt.

The queue

It started with a ten-second teaser, shown on 25 August 2024 after Liam's headline set at Reading Festival. Two days later, at 8am, came a photo of the two brothers side by side and a statement:

“The guns have fallen silent. The stars have aligned. The great wait is over. Come see. It will not be televised.”

— Oasis, 27 August 2024

The announcement landed two days before the 30th anniversary of Definitely Maybe. When general sale opened on 31 August, an estimated 14 million people tried to get 1.4 million tickets for the 17 shows then on sale in the UK and Ireland. Fans reported queues of over a million people ahead of them, error pages, and a "queue for the queue".

The bigger row was over price. Ticketmaster was criticised for selling "In Demand" and "Official Platinum" tickets at inflated, dynamic prices. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority opened an investigation that September into whether Ticketmaster had broken the law, and in March 2025 concluded that it "may have misled Oasis fans" with unclear pricing. For every date outside the UK and Ireland, the band dropped dynamic pricing altogether. In late October 2024, the promoters also cancelled more than 50,000 tickets and put them back on sale at face value.

It wasn't the first time Oasis demand broke the system. In 1996, 2.5 million people applied for tickets to two nights at Knebworth, which held 125,000 people each.

The run

1. 4–5 Jul
   Cardiff, Principality Stadium. 2 nights, the first Oasis shows since 2009.
2. 11–20 Jul
   Manchester, Heaton Park. 5 nights in the band's home city.
3. 25 Jul–3 Aug
   London, Wembley Stadium. 5 nights.
4. 8–12 Aug
   Edinburgh, Murrayfield. 3 nights.
5. 16–17 Aug
   Dublin, Croke Park. 2 nights.
6. 24 Aug–13 Sep
   North America: Toronto (2), Chicago (1), East Rutherford (2), Pasadena (2), then Mexico City (2).
7. 27–28 Sep
   London again: 2 more nights at Wembley, sold through an invitation-only ticket sale. 7 Wembley nights in all.
8. 21–26 Oct
   Asia: Goyang, near Seoul (1), and Tokyo Dome (2).
9. 31 Oct–8 Nov
   Australia: Melbourne (3) and Sydney (2).
10. 15–23 Nov
    South America: Buenos Aires (2), Santiago (1), and São Paulo (2), the last night of the tour.

Wembley was the centre of it: seven nights, with attendance figures of 405,000 for the first five and 162,000 for the last two, more than half a million people in one stadium.

The band

Alongside the brothers, the reunion brought back three men from the band's history. Paul "Bonehead" Arthurs played with Oasis from its beginning in 1991 until he left in 1999, and rejoined in 2024. Gem Archer, formerly of Heavy Stereo, joined in September 1999, and Andy Bell, formerly of Ride, joined that November; both played on the band's last three albums. On drums was the American Joey Waronker, who has played with Beck, R.E.M. and Atoms for Peace. Liam's verdict on him:

“He's the best and we're lucky to have him I've enjoyed all our drummers but this guy is special.”

— Liam Gallagher

In October 2025, Bonehead announced he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and would miss the shows in Seoul, Tokyo, Melbourne and Sydney. "I'm really sad to be missing these shows, but I'm feeling good and will be back ready to go in time for South America," he said.

The set

On the opening night in Cardiff they played 23 songs: they walked on to "Fuckin' in the Bushes" on tape, opened with "Hello", closed the main set with "Rock 'n' Roll Star", and ended the encore with "The Masterplan", "Don't Look Back in Anger", "Wonderwall" and "Champagne Supernova".

The support changed by continent: Cast and Richard Ashcroft in the UK and Ireland, Cage the Elephant in North America, Asian Kung-Fu Generation and Otoboke Beaver in Asia, Ball Park Music in Australia, and Richard Ashcroft again in South America.

All but one of those songs ("Little by Little", from 2002) came from the band's first three albums and the singles and B-sides around them.

What the critics said

The reviews of the Cardiff opener were close to unanimous. The Independent gave it five stars; its critic, who had seen them at Knebworth, wrote that "this is the best they've been since '96. Some might say better." Rolling Stone UK, also five stars, called it "undeniably the cultural moment of the year". NME wrote that "Liam's voice hasn't sounded this good in 20-odd years", and the BBC described Liam "biting into the lyrics like a lion tearing apart its prey".

The same BBC review noticed something else: across the two-and-a-quarter-hour show, the brothers never addressed one another.

Moments from the road

Night after night, the stadium did the Poznan, the Manchester City celebration, during "Cigarettes & Alcohol". At Wembley in July, with Dua Lipa and Jarvis Cocker in the crowd, there was a cardboard cut-out of City manager Pep Guardiola on stage.

"Live Forever" became the tour's tribute song. In July the screens showed Ozzy Osbourne after his death; at Wembley in September it was the boxer Ricky Hatton; in Argentina, Diego Maradona. In São Paulo on 22 November, two days after the death of Gary "Mani" Mounfield, the band dedicated it "to our dear friend, our hero, the one and only Gary 'Mani' Mounfield".

There was loss in the crowd too: on 2 August a fan died after a fall from the upper tier at Wembley, and the band spoke of their shock and sadness.

In all, the tour ran 41 shows over 145 days. At the last of them, in São Paulo, Liam left the door open: "We'll see you again sometime."

Fewer nights, bigger rooms

Forty-one shows is not a long tour by old standards: in the 1990s, breakthrough bands routinely played well over a hundred nights a year. But every one of these was a stadium or a park, and more than two million people went. Fewer nights, far more people a night: the reunion is the clearest example yet of how big tours work now.

The film

The tour became a film. Oasis: Don't Look Back in Anger, directed by Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern and written by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, premiered at the Venice Film Festival on 5 September 2026 and became the UK's highest-grossing documentary of the year. The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw called it a "highly enjoyable fan-worship documentary" that "recollects how effortlessly funny the Gallagher brothers are, like a great comic double act". It has been streaming on Disney+ (and Hulu in the US) since 9 October 2026.

What's next: back to Knebworth

On 14 September 2026, Oasis announced a second run: 42 dates in 2027, from 21 May to 26 September, across the UK, Europe and North America.

1. 21 May 2027
   Glasgow, Celtic Park: the opening night, the first of 5.
2. 2027
   Manchester, Etihad Stadium: 11 nights.
3. 2027
   Europe: Munich (3), Barcelona (2), Amsterdam (2), Paris Saint-Denis (2) and Rome (3).
4. 2027
   United States: Foxborough (3) and Las Vegas (3).
5. 2027
   Ireland, Slane Castle: 2 nights.
6. 2027
   Knebworth: 6 nights, 31 years after their two record-breaking nights there in 1996.

The UK sale for these shows became a national row over prices; our guide to getting concert tickets explains what the regulator actually found. For scale, the Eras Tour played 149 nights, Coldplay's Music of the Spheres tour played 225, and our story of the busiest touring years shows how some bands once played more than 200 a year. And for the song neither Gallagher ever gave up, read the story of “Wonderwall”.