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Stop crying your heart out, Oasis fans. The rock band have announced their long-awaited reunion and, with it, their first UK and Ireland shows in 16 years.
After more than a decade of rumours, brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher have (seemingly) healed their longstanding rift and will join one another onstage for the Oasis Live 25 tour, where they will play a string of stadium shows in Manchester, London, Edinburgh and Dublin across summer 2025.
“I never did like that word FORMER,” Liam, 51, had teased of his frontman status just hours earlier, while responding to fans pleading with him to confirm the news.
The tour will include four nights at Heaton Park in Manchester, the band’s hometown, between 11 to 20 July, along with four shows at Wembley Stadium in London from 25 July to 3 August. Gaps in the band’s touring schedule suggest that further shows could be added at a later date.
Their reunion announcement comes right before the 30-year anniversary of Definitely Maybe, the band’s record-breaking debut that includes hits “Supersonic”, “Shakermaker” and “Live Forever”. Next year, meanwhile, will mark the 30th anniversary of their second album (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, one of the biggest-selling LPs by a British act of all time.
A statement from the band said: “The guns have fallen silent. The stars have aligned. The great wait is over. Come see. It will not be televised.”
On the brothers’ decision to reunite, a press release stated: “There has been no great revelatory moment that has ignited the reunion – just the gradual realisation that the time is right.”
Reports have speculated that the shows could be worth as much as £50m. Further rumours of a Glastonbury 2025 headline performance, meanwhile, have yet to be confirmed – the festival’s organisers typically unveil the top billing closer to the event – while there has been no indication that the band will be recording new music.
Formed in Manchester in 1991, Oasis rose to become one of the biggest-selling bands of the era, a phenomenon even among their Britpop peers such as Blur, Pulp and Suede. All seven of their studio albums topped the charts, with that success translating to ticket sales – most famously when 125,000 fans turned up for each of their two Knebworth shows in 1996. They headlined Glastonbury twice, first in 1995, then again in 2004. They won six Brit Awards and two Ivor Novellos.
Oasis were undoubtedly one of the defining bands of the Nineties, as notorious for their headline-generating antics – from public brawls to arrests – as they were loved for their stadium-filling anthems. At a glance, they had it all: Liam was the swaggering, hot-headed frontman, Noel the stoic songwriter and guitarist.
But Liam and Noel’s fraught relationship was ultimately the band’s undoing. The band’s career was peppered by bickering and physical fights – Noel infamously went after his younger brother with a cricket bat after he brought a pub full of new pals back to the studio, while they were recording their second album.
Both brothers walked out on shows on more than one occasion. Noel later claimed he’d worked out that messing with Liam’s head worked better than physical fights, such as moving furniture around when he wasn’t looking to play on his fear of ghosts. They frequently slagged each other off in interviews – a 2009 conversation with Q magazine saw Noel describe Liam as “the angriest man you’ll ever meet… he’s like a man with a fork in a world of soup.”
Then came Rock-en-Seine festival in Paris, the scene of the final stand-off where – according to Noel – Liam wielded his brother’s guitar “like an axe” and “nearly took my face off with it”. Noel quit the band, saying he couldn’t work with Liam “a day longer”.
As they launched their respective solo careers – Liam as a singer-songwriter and Noel with his band High Flying Birds – they took to sniping at one another on Twitter. Most of it came from Liam, whose least offensive insults included comparing Noel to a potato and mocking him after he was accompanied by a woman playing the scissors on an episode of Later… With Jools Holland.
Noel, for his part, was adamant that Liam had – on more than one occasion – gone too far. Without a proper apology, he told journalists, they’d never be on good terms. It might explain why Liam, who has frequently spoken about his keenness for a reunion, significantly toned down the insults in recent years. Just last week, Noel returned in kind by praising his brother’s stage presence. “I don’t have the same attitude as him,” he said. “Liam’s [voice] is 10 shots of tequila on a Friday night,” he joked. “Mine’s half a Guinness.”
Plans are also underway for Oasis to tour outside of Europe next year, while a rumoured Glastonbury headline slot in 2025 is also still on the cards. There has been no suggestion that the band will be recording any new music.
The shows announced so far are as follows:
JULY 2025
4 July – Cardiff, Principality Stadium
5 July – Cardiff, Principality Stadium
11 July – Manchester, Heaton Park
12 July – Manchester, Heaton Park
19 July – Manchester, Heaton Park
20 July – Manchester, Heaton Park
25 July – London, Wembley Stadium
26 July – London, Wembley Stadium
AUGUST 2025
2 August – London, Wembley Stadium
3 August – London, Wembley Stadium
8 August – Edinburgh, Scottish Gas Murrayfield Stadium
9 August – Edinburgh, Scottish Gas Murrayfield Stadium
16 August – Dublin, Croke Park
17 August – Dublin, Croke Park
Tickets for the UK tour dates will go on sale at 9am on Saturday 31 August and be available from ticketmaster.co.uk, gigsandtours.com, and seetickets.com. Dublin tickets will available from 8am that same day from www.ticketmaster.ie.
