Sam Fender announces UK and European ‘People Watching’ tour for 2024 and 2025
Sam Fender has shared details of a new UK and European tour, set to kick off later this year. Find a list of dates and ticket details below.
Titled the ‘People Watching’ tour, the new run of shows follows the North Shields singer-songwriter teasing a new announcement recently – launching a countdown clock on his official website which is teasing something happening at midnight tonight (October 18).
Billboards were also spotted by fans outside of major UK arenas earlier this week, suggesting that Fender was gearing up for his first UK tour since 2022.
Now, the full list of dates for the tour have been shared, with UK and Ireland shows kicking off later this year, before the guitarist heads across Europe in early 2025.
With Wunderhorse joining him as a special guest for the tour, dates commence on December 2 with an opening night at Dublin’s 3Arena. From there, he’ll perform at Leeds’ First Direct Arena, Manchester’s Co-op Live Arena and The O2 in London on December 4, 6 and 10 respectively.
Dates are also scheduled for Birmingham and Glasgow later in the month, before the UK leg of the tour concludes with a huge show in the singer’s hometown of Newcastle. This will take place at the Utilita Arena on December 20, and due to expected high demand, the gig will be available by ballot to customers with North-East postcodes only.
After those UK shows, Fender will begin his European tour dates in spring 2025. These all take place next March, and include shows in Paris, Zurich, Cologne, Berlin, Amsterdam and more.
Tickets for all shows go on sale next Friday (October 25) at 10am. £1 from every ticket sold for the UK dates will be donated to Music Venue Trust in support of grassroots venues.
Buy tickets here and find a full list of new tour dates below.
Sam Fender’s ‘People Watching’ tour dates are:
DECEMBER 2024:
2 – 3Arena, Dublin
4 – First Direct Arena, Leeds
6 – Co-Op Live, Manchester
10 – The O2, London
13 – Utilita Arena, Birmingham
16 – OVO Hydro, Glasgow
20 – Utilita Arena, Newcastle
MARCH 2025:
4 – Olympia, Paris
5 – 013 Poppodium, Tilburg
8 – Halle 622, Zurich
10 – Palladium, Cologne
12 – Zenith, Munich
13 – ChorusLife Arena, Bergamo
16 – Uber Eats Music Hall, Berlin
18 March – Afas Live, Amsterdam
19 March – Forest National, Brussels
The shows in the UK will mark Fender’s first tour since spring 2022, as well as his first performance in the capital city since headlining Finsbury Park back in the summer of that year. Since then, he has headlined Reading & Leeds Festival in 2023, and Boardmasters earlier this Summer.
As well as teasing the tour dates earlier this week, Fender has also been hinting at the release date of his new single ‘People Watching’ and has told fans to “get ready” for further news incoming.
The singer-songwriter confirmed that his third studio record was finished and “mastered” earlier this month, after sharing snippets of new material online. Fender then released a live version of ‘People Watching’ – a song he’d debuted at an intimate gig this summer.
The upcoming album will serve as the follow-up to NME‘s album of the year 2021, ‘Seventeen Going Under’ – which reached Number One in the UK.
Earlier this year, ‘The Borders’ star gave an update on his forthcoming third full-length effort. “We have been recording and recording and making loads of stuff but it got to the point where I thought, ‘We don’t need to get this out yet. We need to get it right’,” Fender explained.
“For the second one [‘Seventeen Going Under’], we rushed to get that out and the third one we started rushing and I thought, ‘No, we have got to take the time’.”
Speaking to NME in 2022, Fender described his new music as “very pretty” with a strong “singer-songwriter” vibe.
“If I try and force myself to write stadium songs, we could end up fucking it I think,” he admitted at the time. “Instead, I want to write about the stories that I have and the place that I’m mentally at in my life at this point. And I’ve had a lot to write about.”
Ahead of his Plymouth and Boardmasters shows this summer – his only gigs of 2024 so far – Fender teased that more tour dates were “coming soon”. He is currently among the rumoured acts to headline Glastonbury Festival 2025.
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Liberty Dunworth
NME
