Beck opens all six Latin American dates so far, with North American and European shows still to come.
U2 will return to stadiums in 2027 with the Carnaval De Luz Presents: The Greatest Show on Earth World Tour, the band announced on Thursday, October 15. So far only six dates are confirmed, all in Latin America, starting on February 23 at Estadio GNP Seguros in Mexico City.
Mexico City hosts two shows, on February 23 and 26. The tour then moves to Estádio MorumBIS in São Paulo, Brazil, for March 10 and 12, before two nights at Estadio River Plate in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in late March. Beck opens all six announced shows.
Tickets go on sale in two stages. U2.com subscribers can join a presale on Monday, October 19, at 10 a.m. local time. The remaining tickets go on sale through the band's website on Thursday, October 22, at 10 a.m. local time.
The tour was announced alongside a new single, The Greatest Show on Earth, the third song to be released from the album Carnaval De Luz. Brian Eno co-wrote the track with the band. It explores a relationship between lovers struggling to keep faith in each other. Anton Corbijn directed the video, shot in the California desert, which satirises the band as a religious cult in which women do the heavy lifting.
In a joint statement, the band framed the tour's name as a challenge. "The Greatest Show on Earth? Now that's a throwdown." It continued: "It's a dare, to ourselves as much as anyone, to try and have the best night of anybody's life."
Bono told Rolling Stone what he thinks of the track:
"It's maybe our greatest song in a very long time"
The album is due on November 13 and has 12 tracks. It is U2's first full album of new songs since Songs of Experience in 2017; Songs of Surrender (2023), which peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard 200, was a collection of reworked older songs. Martin Garrix, Daniel Lanois and Ryan Tedder contributed to the new album, and the closing track, Torn, is a duet between Bono and Dolly Parton.
Bassist Adam Clayton told Rolling Stone that the record is "an extraordinary collection of songs," and that it is "the culmination of the work that everyone has been doing for 50 years."
Their last stadium run was the Joshua Tree Tour, which ended in Mumbai, India, in December 2019, by which point it had drawn close to 3 million fans globally. The band said last month that it was back in rehearsals for a new stadium tour, and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. is making a full return to the stage after surgery.
Dates for Europe and North America are expected in the coming weeks, and the band is also working on plans to return to its native Ireland.
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