radiohead tour dates

Radiohead’s 2025 World Tour: A Post-Apocalyptic Pilgrimage for the Disillusioned Masses
By Lucía “Lucky” Valenti, International Cynic-at-Large, currently marooned in an airport lounge that smells of wet carpet and broken dreams.

LONDON—In a move that simultaneously reassures and terrifies the planet, Radiohead have announced their first full world tour since 2018, a 33-date slog across four continents that begins this August in Reykjavík and ends, appropriately, at the edge of the known universe—also known as the Foro Sol in Mexico City. Tickets go on sale next Friday at 10 a.m. local time, which is UTC-3 in Argentina, UTC+8 in Singapore, and “whenever your Wi-Fi stops weeping” in most of the Global South.

The announcement landed like a well-aimed drone strike on the collective psyche of a world already teetering between climate dread and TikTok dances. Within minutes, #Radiohead25 was trending in 37 languages, including Klingon and whatever Elon Musk now calls Portuguese. The band’s website crashed harder than the lira, while scalpers in Shanghai began offering “platinum VIP kidney packages” for the Tokyo shows. Somewhere in Brussels, a European commissioner sighed and quietly reclassified Thom Yorke’s falsetto as a renewable resource.

The geopolitical implications are, of course, staggering. British diplomats have already requested extra consular staff in Buenos Aires after the announcement of two nights at Luna Park, citing “historical Anglo-Argentine sensitivity, plus the possibility of B-sides.” Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department has issued a travel advisory warning citizens that attending the Los Angeles dates may result in “existential despair and sudden awareness of income inequality.” Canada, ever polite, simply asked fans to carpool.

From Lagos to Lima, the tour is being parsed like a new IMF austerity program. Kenyan music blogs wonder whether the band’s carbon offset scheme will finally make up for that one time they flew a speaker stack from Oxford to Glastonbury by private jet. German newspapers have produced 4,000-word explainers on why the Berlin show sold out in 12 seconds—roughly the same amount of time it took the Bundestag to approve the latest arms export. And in Seoul, K-pop stans are debating whether Jonny Greenwood’s guitar solos qualify as “visuals,” which is both touching and slightly terrifying.

The set list, leaked by a disgruntled roadie who now works in crypto, promises deep cuts and newer material nobody admits to liking yet. Expect “Pyramid Song” to soundtrack footage of melting glaciers on the jumbotrons, while “Idioteque” will be accompanied by live NFTs that immediately depreciate. Rumor has it the encore will be a 17-minute ambient piece titled “Brexit Was a Typo,” but management insists that’s still being focus-grouped in Ohio.

Of course, no global event is complete without collateral damage. Dublin hotel prices have quadrupled, prompting the Irish government to consider renting out Leinster House on Airbnb. In Tel Aviv, the band’s decision to skip the city has triggered a thousand think pieces and exactly one folk singer lighting himself on fire on Rothschild Boulevard—he was fine, apparently, but the hummus was ruined. Meanwhile, Australian fans are already bracing for ticket prices that rival the GDP of Tuvalu, a country that, coincidentally, will be underwater by the time Radiohead tours again.

Yet for all the hand-wringing, there remains something perversely comforting about five middle-aged Brits dragging 200 tons of gear across a burning planet just to remind us how lonely we feel. In an age when most concerts are livestreamed to avatars in the metaverse, Radiohead still insists on analog sweat and feedback squeals that could sterilize small mammals. Call it nostalgia, call it masochism, call it the last collective scream before the algorithm wins—whatever it is, we’ll be there, waving our overpriced plastic cups like communion wafers for the damned.

And when the final chord of “Karma Police” dissolves into the Mexico City smog, we’ll shuffle back to our lives, slightly more aware that the police in question were inside us all along. Until then, set your alarms, mortgaged your kidneys, and remember: the only thing more inevitable than death and taxes is Radiohead making you feel both at the same time.