Ed Sheeran, the English singer-songwriter whose 2023 Australian tour broke the record for attendance at a ticketed event – twice in the same month – has announced a new tour for 2026.
Sheeran’s Loop tour of stadium shows starts in Aotearoa New Zealand in January, playing Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch before heading to Western Australia for his first concert in Perth on Saturday 31 January.
Thereafter, Sheeran plays Sydney’s Accor Stadium (13-14 February), Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium (20-21 February) and Melbourne’s Marvel Stadium (26-27 February), with the leisurely tour finishing at Adelaide Oval on Thursday 5 March.
Having already sold over 2.5 million tickets across Australia and New Zealand to date, the Loop tour sees Sheeran returning to with a brand-new live show in support of his forthcoming album, Play, which is released on Friday 12 September.
Sheeran: new chapter
Play is being promoted as ‘the beginning of a fresh new chapter for Sheeran … an explorative, technicolour pop album’ inspired by ‘musical cultures from around the globe – particularly Indian and Persian cultures and their surprising melodic connections to the Irish folk tradition he grew up with through shared scales, rhythms and melodies’.
The 2026 tour set list is expected to lean heavily on the new album – including the three singles from Play already released this year: ‘Azizam’ (certified Gold and number one on commercial radio play in Australia), ‘Old Phone’ and ‘Sapphire’ – as well as the singer-songwriter’s greatest hits.
Sheeran, whose folk-pop hits include ‘Shape of You’, ‘Perfect’, ‘Photograph’ and ‘Thinking Out Loud’, has sold nearly 200 million records globally since the independent release of his debut EP, No. 5 Collaborations Project in 2011.
He was recently celebrated as a 12-time member of Spotify’s Billions Club, while Apple Music revealed his 2017 hit ‘Shape Of You’ was their most-streamed song of the last decade. Sheeran recently surpassed 100 million monthly listeners on Spotify, seeing him become the platform’s fourth most-listened to artist in the world.
Sheeran’s 2023 Mathematics Tour saw him play to a record-breaking 200,000 fans across two nights at Melbourne’s MCG, while his popularity has also translated into guest appearances and cameos in the likes of long-running Australian TV series Neighbours, Game of Thrones, and the feature films Bridget Jones’s Baby (2016) and Yesterday (2019).
Presale tickets for Telstra Plus members for Sheeran’s Loop Tour go on sale on Friday 25 July; Frontier members can access presale tickets from Monday 28 July. Tickets go on sale to the general public from Tuesday 29 July.
Visit Frontier Touring for full tour and ticket information.
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Eddy Current Suppression Ring returns after nine year hiatus for free headline gig
Independent Australian rock band Eddy Current Suppression don’t do things by the book, which is why instead of raking in the cash by playing a gruelling but lucrative national tour, they’re playing a free, accessible-to-all gig at Fed Square in the heart of Melbourne on 26 September after a nine year hiatus.
Formed for a one-off Christmas party gig at Corduroy Records’s vinyl pressing plant in Highett in 2003, the band (named after an electrical component at the printing plant) soon became hot favourites in the Australian music scene as a result of their idiosyncratic garage rock sound.
Nor was Eddy Current limited to playing small, underground gigs, winning the Australian Music Prize in 2008 for debut album Primary Colours, breaking into the ARIA Top 20 with 2010’s Rush to Relax and memorably playing to large and excited audiences at Golden Plains Music Festival and Dark Mofo in 2016.
Now, its four members – drummer Daniel Young aka Danny Current, guitarist Michael Young aka Eddy Current, vocalist Brendan Huntley (also a visual artist) aka Brendan Suppression and bassist Brad Barry aka Rob Solid – return to Melbourne Federation Square on Victoria’s AFL Grand Final eve public holiday, for their first ever free show.
Read: Eddy Current Suppression Ring returns after nine year hiatus for free headline gig
