Rod Stewart sets The Final Encore as his last tour

Rod Stewart has announced that The Final Encore, the tour scheduled for April to July 2027 across the UK, Ireland and mainland Europe, will be his last rock and roll tour. The 81-year-old delivered the news in an Instagram video on 28 September 2026.

“Ladies and gentlemen, after much deliberation and sadness, I have to announce next year will be my last tour ever, ever, ever. I’m not retiring, but this will be the last rock and roll tour,” he said. He has been “singing the music I love since I was 19 years old” and wants to “thank you the best way I know how… with the music and one hell of a show.”

The itinerary opens in Dublin and includes Belfast, Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester, London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen, Munich, Prague and Kraków. No further touring is planned after 2027, though Stewart stressed he is not retiring from performing altogether.

Six decades on the road

Sir Roderick David Stewart, born and raised in London to Scottish and English parents, stands among the best-selling music artists of all time, with more than 120 million records sold worldwide. He has taken 10 albums to number one in the UK and placed 31 singles in the top ten there, six of them at the summit. In the United States he has logged 16 top-ten singles, four of them number ones. He was knighted in the 2016 Birthday Honours for services to music and charity.

That career rests on a distinctive raspy voice and a run of records that stretches from the late 1960s to the present. The discography opens with Truth in 1968 and Beck-Ola in 1969, moves through Gasoline Alley and Every Picture Tells a Story in 1970 and 1971, and continues across decades of studio and live work. Later entries include Merry Christmas, Baby in 2012, the live set Live 1976-1998: Tonight’s the Night in 2014, Blood Red Roses in 2018, the Royal Philharmonic collaboration You’re In My Heart in 2019, The Tears Of Hercules in 2021 and Swing Fever in 2024. The span is the story of a singer who has stayed on stage as steadily as he has stayed on disc.

What the dates mark

For Irish audiences the choice of Dublin as the opening night, with Belfast also on the list, puts the farewell within reach before the dates move through Scotland and England to mainland Europe. The framing is precise: this is the last rock and roll tour, not a full stop on music. After 2027 the full touring cycle ends; other forms of performance remain open.

The announcement follows a coronary stent procedure in August 2026, after which doctors confirmed he was recovering well. That recovery is the immediate backdrop to a decision framed by deliberation and sadness, and by gratitude expressed the only way he says he knows — with the music and the show.

What remains is the run itself. Tickets, set lists and any further European or UK additions are still to come into view, but the boundary is set: April to July 2027, Dublin to Kraków, and then the long road of rock and roll touring closes.