Rod Stewart has announced that his next tour will be his last.<\/p>\n
The 81-year-old singer has been touring since the early 1960s, when he set out across Europe with a harmonica \u2013 and ended up getting deported from Spain for vagrancy \u2013 in a duo with folk singer Wizz Jones.<\/p>\n
But while he hasn\u2019t ruled out one-off gigs in the future, the touring element of his career is coming to an end with Rod Stewart: The Final Encore, a tour of the UK and Europe beginning April 2027.<\/p>\n
The arena run includes UK dates in Belfast, Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester and London, and after an extensive European run, finishes up in Hanover, Germany, in July.<\/p>\n
Promising \u201cone hell of a show\u201d, Stewart said: \u201cThe time has come to say farewell to life on the road. After more than six decades, The Final Encore will most definitely be my last. I\u2019ve been singing the music I love since I was 19 years old, and I\u2019ve had the privilege of taking it around the world to all of you. It has given me a life beyond anything I could ever have imagined, and I hope I\u2019ve given you some fond memories in return. So, may I take this opportunity to thank you for making this extraordinary life possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stewart still has a couple of live dates currently scheduled for after the end of the tour, in Red Rocks, Colorado, in September 2027. Those are dates he was forced to reschedule from June this year, due to inflamed vocal cords.<\/p>\n
The June dates were part of One Last Time, his farewell tour of the US. He later paused a concert in Utah to use an oxygen mask after nearly fainting during the performance, then cancelled the remainder of the tour after undergoing a heart procedure.<\/p>\n
Earlier on the One Last Time tour, in 2025, he had to cancel concerts due to flu, Covid and strep throat, and for needing vocal rest. It looked like his Glastonbury \u201clegends slot\u201d performance was at risk of cancellation due to flu, but he went through with the gig.<\/p>\n
A Guardian review described him as being \u201cin good voice, especially given he cancelled gigs \u2026 It helps that he\u2019s never had a clear or stereotypically youthful voice to begin with; the years show, mostly, in his struggle to sustain long notes.\u201d It also heralded him as \u201ca physical performer, writhing and launching around like one of the leggier Muppets\u201d.<\/p>\n
Stewart has been touring since his teens. After his duo with Jones, he spent time shuttling between groups such as Jimmy Powell & the Five Dimensions, Steampacket and Shotgun Express before joining the Jeff Beck Group, and then Faces. His solo career began in earnest at the close of the 1960s, and Stewart became a huge commercial success: after 1971\u2019s chart-topping Every Picture Tells a Story, all but one of his 29 studio albums since have reached the UK Top 10. The most recent, 2024\u2019s Swing Fever \u2013 a collaboration with Jools Holland \u2013 reached No 1.<\/p>\n
Though Stewart may be retiring from touring, he could well release more studio projects. He told Desert Island Discs that he and former Faces bandmate Ronnie Wood had \u201csongs that we\u2019re working on from back in the day, but it\u2019s hard to make our times tally. When we do get a chance to get in the studio again, we will finish off these songs. We\u2019ve got a good body of songs going.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rod Stewart: The Final Tour dates in full<\/p>\n
April 23 3Arena, Dublin, Ireland
April 27 SSE Arena, Belfast, UK
April 29 OVO Hydro, Glasgow, UK
May 4 Utilita Arena, Birmingham, UK
May 6 Co-op Live, Manchester, UK
May 11 The O2, London, UK
May 28 Ziggo Dome, Amsterdam, Netherlands
May 29 AFAS Dome, Antwerp, Belgium
June 1 Uber Arena, Berlin, Germany
June 3 PSD Bank Dome, D\u00fcsseldorf, Germany
June 6 Royal Arena, Copenhagen, Denmark
June 9 Veikkaus Arena, Helsinki, Finland
June 11 Dalhalla, R\u00e4ttvik, Sweden
June 13 Sverresboro, Trondheim, Norway
June 15 Plenen, Bergen, Norway
June 18 Sportsarena, Budapest, Hungary
June 20 Olympiahalle, Munich, Germany
June 22 Pula Arena, Pula, Croatia
June 24 O2 Arena, Prague, Czech Republic
July 20 Tauron Arena, Krak\u00f3w, Poland
July 24 ZAG Arena, Hanover, Germany<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rod Stewart has announced that his next tour will be his last. The 81-year-old singer has been touring…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":614223,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-614222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/614223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}