Guns N' Roses Tour Dates 2026 — Full Schedule, Cities & Venues

Full Guns N' Roses Tour Schedule

Guns N' Roses Tour Dates — FAQ

About Guns N' Roses

Guns N' Roses formed in Los Angeles in March 1985 when Axl Rose and Izzy Stradlin — childhood friends from Lafayette, Indiana, who had relocated separately to the Sunset Strip glam-metal scene — joined forces with Slash (born Saul Hudson in London, raised in LA), Duff McKagan (a Seattle punk-scene veteran who answered a Recycler classified), and drummer Steven Adler. The five-piece played their first show under the Guns N' Roses name on June 6, 1985 at the Troubadour in West Hollywood, lived together in a cramped studio off Sunset known as the Hell House, and built a reputation across the Strip's club circuit through the back half of 1985 and into 1986 as a hard-rock band markedly more dangerous than the spandex-and-hairspray competition of the Sunset glam era. Geffen Records signed the band in March 1986. Appetite for Destruction recorded in late 1986 with producer Mike Clink, released July 21, 1987, and initially moved slowly out of the gate — radio and MTV resisted the record's content until the band's relentless club and theatre touring through 1987 and 1988 forced Welcome to the Jungle and Sweet Child o' Mine into rotation. Sweet Child o' Mine reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in September 1988; Appetite for Destruction reached number one on the Billboard 200 the next month and stayed in the top 200 for nearly three years. The acoustic-driven follow-up G N' R Lies arrived in November 1988 and produced Patience as a second-side single. By the time Use Your Illusion I and II released simultaneously on September 17, 1991 — debuting at number two and number one on the Billboard 200 respectively and selling more than 770,000 combined copies in the first week in the US alone — Guns N' Roses had become the biggest hard-rock band in the world. The Use Your Illusion Tour that followed ran 28 months and 194 shows across 27 countries and produced the eight-minute November Rain video, which became the longest song ever to crack the Billboard top ten and which still ranks among the most-viewed rock videos in YouTube history. Adler had departed before the Illusions sessions and was replaced by Matt Sorum; Stradlin left mid-tour in 1991 and was replaced by Gilby Clarke. The all-covers The Spaghetti Incident? followed in November 1993. Then the band effectively went on hiatus: Slash left in 1996, McKagan in 1997, Sorum in 1997, and Axl Rose carried the name forward through a long rebuild that eventually produced Chinese Democracy in November 2008 — recorded with a rotating cast that included Buckethead, Robin Finck, Bumblefoot, Tommy Stinson, Brain Mantia, and DJ Ashba over more than a decade of sessions, and on which Axl Rose was the only original member to appear. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted the classic Appetite-era lineup in April 2012. Axl Rose declined to attend; Slash, McKagan, Adler, Sorum, Stradlin, and Clarke played the induction. In April 2016 — to almost universal surprise — Axl Rose, Slash, and Duff McKagan reunited for two Coachella headline sets, kicking off the Not in a Lifetime Tour that has since become one of the longest-running and highest-grossing rock tours in history. The reunion lineup retained Dizzy Reed (keys, in the band since 1990), Frank Ferrer (drums, in the band since 2006), and Richard Fortus (rhythm guitar, since 2002), with Melissa Reese rounding out the touring six-piece on additional keys and programming. The band has released the Hard Skool EP (2021), revisited unreleased material from the late-1990s era (Perhaps, Absurd, Hard Skool, The General), and confirmed work on a full-length reunion-era studio record — though no firm release date has been announced. Across the catalogue Guns N' Roses have sold more than 100 million records worldwide, scored five number-one Billboard 200 albums in the US, and remained — through every fracture, hiatus, and reformation — the touchstone hard-rock band of their generation. The Not in a Lifetime Tour continues into 2026 and beyond with stadium dates announced across multiple continents.

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