AC/DC Tour 2026

Inside AC/DC

AC/DC are the Sydney-formed hard-rock institution that, more than half a century after Malcolm and Angus Young plugged in for their first pub gig at Chequers nightclub on New Year's Eve 1973, remain one of the most reliably devastating live bands on the planet. Across a catalogue that runs from the Bon Scott-fronted run of High Voltage, Let There Be Rock, Powerage, and Highway to Hell through Brian Johnson's 1980 arrival and the cultural-monolith status of Back in Black, on through For Those About to Rock, The Razors Edge, Stiff Upper Lip, Black Ice, Rock or Bust, and the 2020 reunion record Power Up, the band have done one thing better than almost any peer: walk out under a 60,000-seat roof or open sky, hit the opening chord of Thunderstruck or Hells Bells, and detonate the entire bowl for the next two hours.

The Power Up tour, which launched in May 2024 after a long pandemic-shaped layoff and continued through 2025, returned the band to global stadium scale with Angus Young in his trademark schoolboy uniform leading a rebuilt lineup behind Brian Johnson, longtime bassist Cliff Williams, and a thunderous rhythm section anchored by drummer Matt Laug, with Stevie Young covering the rhythm-guitar chair after Malcolm's 2017 death. The show is purpose-built classic hard rock: cannons firing on For Those About to Rock, the giant bell descending for Hells Bells, the inflatable Rosie on Whole Lotta Rosie, Angus's full-length duck-walk solo on Let There Be Rock, and a wall of pure Marshall-stack volume that has aged better than almost any other production element from the era it came up in.

AC/DC arrive in your city as the living thread between 1970s pub-rock origins and 21st-century stadium spectacle — a band whose audience now reliably spans three generations of the same family, and whose night-of catalogue delivery remains, by any honest measure, untouchable.

About AC/DC

AC/DC formed in Sydney, Australia in November 1973 when Glasgow-born brothers Malcolm Young (rhythm guitar) and Angus Young (lead guitar) — both raised in the Burwood suburb of Sydney after their family emigrated in 1963 — recruited vocalist Dave Evans, bassist Larry Van Kriedt, and drummer Colin Burgess for a New Year's Eve gig at Chequers, a Sydney nightclub. The lineup churned through 1974 before settling on Bon Scott as frontman by October of that year, with Phil Rudd on drums and Mark Evans on bass shortly thereafter.

The Australian-only debut High Voltage (1975), followed by T.N.T. (1975) and Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap (1976), built the band into a national arena draw before international labels picked up edited compilations under the High Voltage banner. Let There Be Rock (1977), Powerage (1978), and the band's commercial breakthrough Highway to Hell (1979, produced by Robert John 'Mutt' Lange) pushed AC/DC onto the world stage just as Scott's fatal alcohol-poisoning incident in London on 19 February 1980 nearly ended the band entirely.

Newcastle-born Brian Johnson, formerly of Geordie, was recruited within weeks. The result was Back in Black (July 1980), a record built on the grief and momentum of Scott's death that became, by most credible accounting, one of the best-selling albums in history with sales estimated at roughly 50 million copies worldwide and an enduring radio and streaming presence that has barely flagged in four decades.

For Those About to Rock We Salute You (1981), the patchier mid-eighties run of Flick of the Switch, Fly on the Wall, and Blow Up Your Video, and the Bruce Fairbairn-produced rebound on The Razors Edge (1990) — with Thunderstruck, Moneytalks, and Are You Ready arriving alongside a now-classic Donington Monsters of Rock headline — kept the band touring stadiums through the nineties. Ballbreaker (1995), Stiff Upper Lip (2000), and Black Ice (2008, the band's first global number one in the US) sustained the catalogue, while the Black Ice tour stretched into 2010 across multiple continents and grossed comfortably over US$400 million.

The 2010s tested the band's continuity severely: Malcolm Young stepped back in 2014 with dementia and died in November 2017; Phil Rudd was charged in New Zealand and absent from the Rock or Bust touring lineup; Brian Johnson left the tour mid-run in 2016 over hearing-loss concerns with Axl Rose covering remaining dates; Cliff Williams retired at the end of that cycle. The Power Up reunion in November 2020, with Brian Johnson, Phil Rudd, Cliff Williams, and Stevie Young all back in the studio with Angus, was therefore not a foregone conclusion — and the 2024 tour launch, with a partially rebuilt rhythm section, marked their return to the global stadium circuit after roughly an eight-year live absence.

The band were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2003 by Aerosmith's Steven Tyler, have sold an estimated 200 million records worldwide, and stand alongside The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath as one of the defining acts of rock's stadium era.

Power Up tour and the stadium return

The Power Up tour is AC/DC's current touring production and the band's first global stadium routing since the Rock or Bust cycle wound down in 2016. The European leg launched in Gelsenkirchen, Germany in May 2024 and continued through major continental stadiums into the summer; the North American leg opened in Minneapolis in April 2025 and has been routed predominantly through 50,000- to 75,000-capacity stadium venues rather than the arena drops the band have used in some past cycles.

Continuation into 2026 has been hinted at by the band's camp but, at the time of writing, additional legs are reported as possible rather than confirmed — treat any 2026 routing claim as provisional until AC/DC and the local promoter publish the on-sale notice. The current touring lineup is Angus Young (lead guitar, schoolboy uniform), Brian Johnson (vocals, flat cap), Stevie Young (rhythm guitar, taking over from his late uncle Malcolm), Cliff Williams (bass, returning from retirement), and Matt Laug (drums, covering for Phil Rudd through the current run).

The show is structured as a 120- to 135-minute set built almost entirely from the canon — typically opening with the If You Want Blood opening montage into a Back in Black or Thunderstruck salvo and closing with For Those About to Rock and the cannon volleys that have closed the band's main set since 1981 — with a giant inflatable Rosie deployed during Whole Lotta Rosie, the Hells Bells bell descending from the rig on its title song, and Angus's signature mid-set extended solo, full-length duck-walk, and bare-torso outro on Let There Be Rock. Production volume is intentionally enormous; ear protection is sensible.

Stage flames, pyrotechnics, and the For Those About to Rock cannon array make AC/DC one of the loudest and most visually pyrotechnic stadium shows on the road at this scale.

AC/DC tickets

AC/DC tickets are sold through Ticketmaster, Live Nation, AXS, and regional primary partners depending on the territory, with the band's tmAttractionKeyword listed as 'AC/DC' (slash included) on the Ticketmaster system. Verified Fan-style registration has been used on some Power Up on-sales in North America to filter out resale brokers, but most European and Australian on-sales have been straight general-public timed releases through the local promoter.

Pricing for the Power Up stadium routing has generally landed in the standard hard-rock stadium range: upper-bowl seats typically run from the equivalent of $60–$110 USD, mid-bowl seats $130–$200, lower-bowl and field GA $220–$400, and a limited allocation of VIP hospitality packages — pre-show food, early entry, soundcheck access on select dates, premium viewing positions, and tour merchandise — that have been reported at $500 and up. Dynamic pricing on some North American dates has pushed prime seats higher on demand; behaviour varies by venue and on-sale.

Official fan club presales through the band's email list run roughly a week before general on-sale on most legs. For secondary tickets, use Ticketmaster Verified Resale, AXS Official Resale, or Twickets in the UK rather than generic search-ad resale sites, and treat any face-value 'deal' on a stadium date as suspect — verified resale tends to trade at or above face for in-demand AC/DC cities.

The band have historically not actively combatted secondary markets the way some peer acts have, so buyer caution matters more here than usual.

AC/DC setlist — what they play

The Power Up setlist is the canonical AC/DC catalogue plus a small handful of cuts from the 2020 album, structured for maximum momentum and rotated only modestly between dates. The show typically opens with the If You Want Blood You've Got It montage on the screens — the band running a short pre-show film built around Angus and Bon footage — before launching with If You Want Blood (You've Got It) into a hard-rock salvo of Back in Black and Demon Fire from the Power Up record.

The first third tends to land Shot Down in Flames, Have a Drink on Me or Stiff Upper Lip, Shot in the Dark from Power Up, and Thunderstruck — the latter routinely arriving in the back third on some nights and the opening third on others depending on the production cue. The middle of the show works through Hells Bells (with the bell descending from the rig and Brian Johnson ringing it), Shoot to Thrill, Sin City or Rock 'n' Roll Train, You Shook Me All Night Long, and Highway to Hell.

The back-half anchor is Whole Lotta Rosie with the inflatable Rosie deployed on stage left, followed by the extended Let There Be Rock featuring Angus's full-length mid-set solo, the duck-walk down the catwalk, and the bare-torso outro that has closed the song on every AC/DC tour since the seventies. The main set typically closes with T.N.T. and For Those About to Rock (We Salute You), the latter featuring the cannon volleys timed to the chorus.

The encore is consistently a Highway to Hell reprise variant or a final salvo of For Those About to Rock cannon fire. Night-by-night setlist variation is minimal — AC/DC are not a band that experiments live — and setlist.fm is the most reliable real-time source for confirming exactly what your specific date is playing.

Tour cities