First the good news. After playing their first run of shows in eight years in 2025 during a 20-gig blitz across the U.K. and Europe, Radiohead are lining up another 20 gigs for 2027. In fact, according to guitarist Ed O’Brien, 20 is the band’s new sweet spot for touring.
“It’s definitely happening,” O’Brien told Rolling Stone of the group’s new 20-shows-a-year plan. “What we’re going to do is, every year we’re going to do a different continent, and we’re going to do 20 shows each year. No more, no less.”
The current plan is to start touring in 2027 — there definitely won’t be any shows this year — with routing taking them to North America, South America and Asia/Oceania. No dates or locations have been announced yet, but O’Brien promises it will be full-on.
“We want to give absolutely everything each night,” he said of the logic behind the new touring structure that they felt worked very well last year. “We do not ever want it to be like we’re going through the motions or we’re having to run on empty. We’ve got to be able to do it. And you know what? We’re not spring chickens anymore.”
The slower pace makes sense given that O’Brien, 57, noted that from 1990 through 2018 — when the band stopped touring and went on an extended hiatus — “It was pretty much nonstop. It’s all-encompassing and it demands your full attention, and it’s addictive in that way. But it’s not necessarily healthy, because you just keep going, keep going, keep going. And then when you stop, suddenly the ghosts catch up.”
In fact, though the members of Radiohead are old friends who met in their teens and have managed to not just stay together, but thrive and become one of the most beloved modern rock bands of their era, O’Brien said it took last year’s run of shows to remind him just how special their bond is. “That tour was very, very emotional, very profound. We all felt that,” O’Brien said. “We’d look at one another on that stage, like, ‘This is amazing.’ I feel like I’m the luckiest person on the planet, and I’m not just saying that.”
It might also have had something to do with the intense burnout O’Brien felt at the end of Radiohead’s 2018 tour, when he felt quite ready to take a break. “I was done with Radiohead. It had got to a place where I just wasn’t enjoying it. I just didn’t resonate with it anymore, and I wanted to do my own thing,” he said after the difficult sessions for 2016’s A Moon-Shaped Pool album. “I think we’d run out of road. We’d run out of inspiration.” And while the rest of the band wanted to hit the road, O’Brien was reluctant. “I didn’t really want to tour, and they knew that. But I did it and I’m glad I did. I saw it through to the end,” he said.
One of the other things that got him back in the groove was working on his solo album, Blue Morpho (May 22), which gave him enough time away that he could start thinking about getting back into the Radiohead business again. That began with him joining bandmates Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Colin Greenwood and Phil Selway at a rehearsal studio in 2024, where they first began discussing a a return.
“We’re like, ‘How do we know if we’re going to be any good?’ And the chemistry was there from the very beginning,” he recalled. “I think we always knew that if we got the love between us right, then it all flows from there.” For now, though, O’Brien made no mention of the group getting back into the studio to record a follow-up to A Moon-Shaped Pool.
This story originally appeared on Billboard
