Level 42 join Simple Minds on the V Tour in 2027

Level 42 will support Simple Minds on the European leg of the V Tour in 2027. The band announced the news on 6 September, placing themselves on a run that marks five decades of Simple Minds.

Four days later they added a further show at the Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam, set for 1 May 2027. General sale for that extra night began on 12 September through simpleminds.com. Level 42 announced the dates on their official website and social channels, and the listings also appeared on tour and venue sites.

From the Isle of Wight to the big rooms

Level 42 are an English jazz-funk band formed on the Isle of Wight in 1979. Through the 1980s and 1990s they scored a run of UK and worldwide hits that carried them far beyond the club circuit that first shaped them. The early catalogue moved quickly: Sensational Level 42 and The Early Tapes both appeared in 1981, followed by The Pursuit of Accidents in 1982 and Standing In the Light in 1983. A Physical Presence and World Machine arrived in 1985; Running In the Family followed in 1987 and fixed the group in the wider pop consciousness of that decade.

The later years have been less about chasing the charts and more about keeping the catalogue alive on stage and on disc. Something About You: The Collection landed in 2015; the Eternity Tour 2018 set captured a live chapter; 2022 brought a run of singles, mixes, B-sides and bonus-track compilations; Live in Switzerland was remastered in 2023. The arc is one of a band that never quite left the road, even as the industry around them shifted.

That continuity is what makes the Simple Minds pairing land with weight. Two acts with long European touring histories will share bills in four countries, and the added Amsterdam date suggests demand already pressing against the original schedule. For listeners who have followed Level 42 from the early Isle of Wight jazz-funk sets through World Machine and Running In the Family into the present live catalogues, 2027 is not a novelty booking so much as another turn on a path they have been on for decades.

Forty Two and the dates still to play

The new studio album, Forty Two, is released on 25 September 2026 and is available for pre-order via coalfacerecords.com. The title nods plainly at the band’s own name and at a body of work that now stretches across five decades of records. It arrives while the group are still in the thick of a 2026 schedule rather than as a free-standing statement at the end of a quiet year.

That schedule remains busy. Level 42 are due on stage in Stirling on 13 September, with remaining dates taking in Germany and further UK venues into December. The European support slot with Simple Minds sits beyond that stretch, in 2027, so the immediate work is the album launch and the rest of the home and German gigs ahead this year.

What is not yet public is the full city-by-city European itinerary beyond the countries already named, and how Forty Two will be framed on stage once the 2027 run begins. Tickets for the added Ziggo Dome show went on general sale on 12 September; the wider V Tour European leg continues to be presented through Simple Minds’ own channels. For now the picture is clear enough: a new record this month, a full UK and German run to close 2026, and a high-profile continental support run with Simple Minds the following spring.