Radiohead announce 20 European arena shows, their first in seven years

Radiohead will play 20 arena concerts in Europe, four nights each in Madrid, Bologna, London, Copenhagen and Berlin, from 4 November to 12 December. They are the band's first shows since 1 August 2018, the last night of the A Moon Shaped Pool tour at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia. Seven years is the longest they have ever gone without playing.

The news came on Wednesday 3 September in a message from Phil Selway. Last year, we got together to rehearse, just for the hell of it.¹ Playing the songs again after so long felt good, he wrote, and it made the five of them want to play some shows.

Tickets are sold only to people who register at radiohead.com, which the band say is meant to keep out touts and bots. Registration opens on Friday 5 September and the sale on Friday 12 September, and a code does not guarantee a ticket. Most tickets go to people living nearest each city, by zones drawn on a map of Europe, with some kept back for fans travelling from elsewhere.

Prices are fixed, with no dynamic pricing. Standing costs £85 in London, plus fees. Every UK ticket carries £1 for the LIVE Trust, which funds grassroots venues, and every other ticket €1 for Médecins Sans Frontières, which the band will match.

Flyers in Radiohead artwork, with dates but no venues, had turned up the day before in London and Copenhagen, one batch of them at the Barbican. Before the announcement a fan found all 20 dates, venues included, in the source code of the site of W.A.S.T.E., the band's mail-order and fan club. In March the five members had registered a new partnership, RHEUK25 LLP, the kind of filing that has come before the band's earlier moves.

The tour starts under a boycott call from the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, which has urged fans to stay away until the band distance themselves from Jonny Greenwood's concerts in Tel Aviv with Dudu Tassa.

France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Ireland are not on the list, and Le HuffPost reads the last line of Selway's message as a hope that French dates may follow. For now, it will just be these ones but who knows where this will all lead.¹

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