Iron Maiden Tour Dates 2026 — Full Schedule, Cities & Venues

Iron Maiden Tour Dates — FAQ

About Iron Maiden

Iron Maiden formed on Christmas Day 1975 in the East London borough of Leyton when Steve Harris, a 19-year-old bassist who had just left a pub-circuit hard-rock band called Smiler, assembled a new lineup intended to play the longer, more progressive, and more melodically ambitious heavy rock that Harris had been writing on his own. The name came from a Man in the Iron Mask film Harris had recently seen on television. The lineup churned through nearly a dozen members across the late 1970s — guitarist Dave Murray joined in 1976 and has been with the band continuously ever since, and vocalist Paul Di'Anno arrived in 1978 — before Maiden's first proper studio recording, the four-track Soundhouse Tapes EP in 1979, made the band the New Wave of British Heavy Metal's most-talked-about new act. EMI signed them in late 1979. The self-titled debut Iron Maiden released April 14, 1980, hit number four on the UK albums chart, and was followed by Killers in February 1981. Paul Di'Anno was replaced on vocals by Bruce Dickinson — the former Samson frontman whose multi-octave operatic delivery would define the band's classic-era sound — in time for The Number of the Beast sessions. The Number of the Beast released March 22, 1982, became Iron Maiden's first UK number-one album, drove the Beast on the Road tour through 179 dates across 1982, and ranks among the landmark releases of heavy-metal history. Drummer Nicko McBrain replaced Clive Burr ahead of the Piece of Mind sessions in 1983, completing the lineup that would carry Maiden through the classic 1980s run: Piece of Mind (1983), Powerslave (1984), Somewhere in Time (1986, a foundational influence on every melodic-power-metal record that followed), and Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (1988, the band's first UK number-one studio LP). The World Slavery Tour supporting Powerslave ran 187 shows across 13 months from August 1984 to July 1985 and produced the Live After Death double LP — still regarded as one of the definitive live heavy-metal records ever released. Adrian Smith left the band in 1990 and was replaced by Janick Gers; Bruce Dickinson left in 1993 for a solo career and was replaced by Blaze Bayley for two studio albums (The X Factor, Virtual XI) and an extensive touring cycle. Dickinson and Smith both returned in 1999 in time for the Brave New World sessions, expanding Maiden to a three-guitar lineup (Murray, Smith, Gers) that has been intact for more than a quarter-century. The reunion-era studio run produced Brave New World (2000), Dance of Death (2003), A Matter of Life and Death (2006 — performed in its entirety on the supporting tour), The Final Frontier (2010), The Book of Souls (2015, the band's first double studio LP at 92 minutes), and Senjutsu (2021, a Japanese-themed double LP that became the band's tenth UK top-five album and the second Maiden album in a row to debut at number one on the UK chart). Across the catalogue Iron Maiden have sold more than 100 million records worldwide and scored five number-one UK albums. Bruce Dickinson is a qualified commercial airline pilot and personally flew the band, crew, and cargo around the world on the Maiden-branded Boeing 747 'Ed Force One' across the Somewhere Back in Time, Final Frontier, and Book of Souls world tours. The Run for Your Lives 50th-anniversary world tour launched in May 2025 in Budapest, is currently the band's active production, and has been announced through 2026 per the official Iron Maiden channels.

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