Credit: Raph Pour-Hashemi
Sun 4 October 2026 13:00, UK
Brian May has confirmed that Queen’s touring days are over, after a close family friend’s tragic passing made him realise that his relationship to touring was unsustainable.
Though still a united front, Queen’s surviving members, May and Roger Taylor, have spent the last few years focusing on their own solo projects.
Their last live performance as Queen was in 2022, at the tribute event for the late Taylor Hawkins; after this, May toured with Queen and Adam Lambert on The Rhapsody Tour, which ended in Japan in February 2024.
In a new interview with The Times, May revealed that, alongside Taylor, he “made a decision 18 months ago that I didn’t want to tour again.”
The guitarist continued, “A close family friend died when we were in the States, so I said to my tour manager, ‘I’ll just nip home for a few days and come back.’ She looked me in the eyes and said, ‘You know you can’t do that.’”
The tragic loss made May realise that he couldn’t continue touring in the same way: “I love to play, I love to travel, but the trade-off is sacrificing your freedom,” he explained.
May concluded decisively, “I have a wife [the actor Anita Dobson], grandchildren and a lot of astrophysics I want to do, so I’m thinking maybe 50 years is enough.”
Elsewhere, May had been considering a Queen hologram show, as inspired by London’s record-breaking ABBA Voyage experience; however, the musician has since axed that idea due to the amount of AI required in the process.
He shared, I spent a lot of time planning out what I thought could be a Queen show. I’ve kind of backed off now because you can’t do it without massive use of AI, with all the consequences of that.”
Elsewhere in his interview with The Times, May had a request for British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, whom he urged to block “evil” AI data centres before it was “too late”.
ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE 
The Far Out Music Newsletter
All the latest music news from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.