Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien: Band Planning 20 Shows A Year World Tour Starting in 2027 (Report)

After dipping their toe back into touring with 20 European tours at the end of 2025, Radiohead is reportedly set to play 20 shows per year on different continents over the next few years, the band’s guitarist Ed O’Brien told Rolling Stone in an interview published earlier this week.

The conversation took place in a discussion of his new solo album, Blue Morpho (Transgressive Records) which comes out May 22, with O’Brien explaining, “Every year we’re going to do a different continent, and we’re going to do 20 shows each year. No more, no less.”

Pollstar reached out to the band’s reps who declined comment or confirmation.

While no firm plans were announced,, the band’s 20 shows last year in Europe, which wrapped last December, were reportedly the initial salvo in the years-long plan. That tour began Nov. 4 in Madrid, concluded on Dec. 16 in Copenhagen and included four performances each in Bologna, London and Berlin

According to Pollstar reports, Radiohead’s four nights at Madrid’s Movistar Arena on Nov. 4-5 and 7-8 each grossed slightly more than $3 million and sold roughly 17.2K per show with a total gross of close to $12.2M and nearly 69K tickets sold with prices ranging from $55 – $253.

“That tour was very, very emotional, very profound,” the 57-year-old O’Brien told Stone. “We’d look at one another on that stage, like, ‘This is amazing.’ I feel like I’m the luckiest person on the planet, and I’m not just saying that.

 “We want to give absolutely everything each night. We do not ever want it to be like we’re going through the motions or we’re having to run on empty. We’ve got to be able to do it. And you know what? We’re not spring chickens anymore.”

Radiohead were road warriors in the ‘90s and 2000s, but haven’t undertaken a true North American tour since 2018, when they went on hiatus after supporting “Moon Shaped Pool” with a four-month stint over a two-year stretch of non-stop gigging around the world.

“I was done with Radiohead,” explained O’Brien after the recording of (2016’s) Moon Shaped Pool and the subsequent tour. “It had got to a place where I just wasn’t enjoying it. I just didn’t resonate with it anymore, and I wanted to do my own thing. We’d run out of inspiration.”

When the band reunited for rehearsals in 2024, O’Brien said they hadn’t performed together since the 2018 tour. The individual members all worked on solo albums during that time, with singer Thom Yorke and guitarist Jonny Greenwood putting time into their band the Smile. Blue Morpho is technically O’Brien’s second solo effort, after 2020’s Earth, released under the name EOB. It is named after a type of butterfly he’d seen when he lived with his family in Brazil in 2010.

“The chemistry was there from the very beginning,” said O’Brien of last year’s performances. “I think we always knew that if we got the love between us right, then it all flows from there.”