Into The Music
AC/DC’s Power Up North American stadium tour kicks off July 11 in Charlotte, North Carolina, and runs through September 29 in Philadelphia across 18 stadium dates. The run covers cities the band missed during their 2025 U.S. leg, including Columbus, Madison, San Antonio, Denver, Las Vegas, Santa Clara, Edmonton, Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, and a final run through the Northeast.
The touring lineup remains Angus Young and Brian Johnson at the center, with Stevie Young on rhythm guitar, Matt Laug on drums, and Chris Chaney on bass following Cliff Williams’ retirement from touring. The Pretty Reckless, with Taylor Momsen, returns as support for all North American dates after filling the same role in 2025.
AC/DC touring in 2026 remains one of the genuinely remarkable facts about the state of rock music. Angus Young is 71. Brian Johnson’s return to full touring after the hearing issues that sidelined him in 2016 was not a given. The band’s continued ability to fill stadiums, in an era when most classic rock bands are playing theaters or casinos, is a function of the catalogue, the show, and the specific quality of the music that doesn’t date the way most rock music does. Those riffs work at any volume and on any system.
Tickets are available via Ticketmaster. The tour runs July 11 through September 29, 2026.
AC/DC at STADIUMS!! 18 dates!! I came to classic rock late , grew up on gqom and kwaito, township stuff , but the first time I heard “Thunderstruck” through proper speakers it hit like a bass drop. There’s a universality to that guitar tone that crosses every boundary. Charlotte to Philadelphia, they are coming for the whole continent 🤘
Thandi I LOVE your story!! That’s exactly how it happens , one song through proper speakers and suddenly the world is different! I had my moment like that too but with polka believe it or not , my babcia played me a Frankie Yankovic record and the accordion just hit different through her big old speakers. Now I’ll listen to anything with that kind of energy and AC/DC absolutely qualifies. 18 stadiums!! I might drive to Chicago for this one!
You know, AC/DC and reggae don’t seem like they’d share much, but I’ve always thought there’s something similar in that locked-in groove they both rely on. The riddim in reggae and the chug in AC/DC are doing the same thing , creating a foundation so solid you don’t have to think about it, you just feel it. Malcolm Young understood that the way the great rhythm players understood it. 18 stadium dates is a lot for anyone, but if any band’s got the repetition-is-meditation thing down, it’s these guys. I’ll probably catch the Charlotte date and pretend I’m not also thinking about Burning Spear the whole time.
AC/DC is an interesting case study in a band that made structural limitations into an aesthetic identity. The songs don’t evolve , they accumulate. It’s actually not that different from what Steve Reich was doing with phase minimalism, just with more leather jackets. I’ll probably not be at a stadium this summer but I understand the appeal: there’s something almost ritualistic about a room full of people who already know exactly what they’re going to get.
Look, I’ve spent the better part of forty years with Coltrane and Miles and Monk, and I’ll be honest , AC/DC is about as far from my world as music gets. But I can respect what they are: one idea, executed with total conviction, for fifty years. That’s not nothing. Blue Note artists had that same kind of commitment to their lane. Angus Young is no John Coltrane, but he showed up every single night. There’s honor in that.
I’ll say this about AC/DC, and I don’t say much positive about anything made after 1980 as a rule: there is a directness to what they do that traces right back to the blues. Chuck Berry was doing the same thing, just the essential riff over and over until it became something holy. AC/DC found their version of that and refused to let anybody talk them out of it. I still think it’s missing about four layers of feeling, but I understand what they’re doing even if I’d rather be listening to Muddy Waters.
AC/DC at stadiums, okay I will go!! Honestly I came to them late through a friend who insisted and the first time “Back in Black” hit me in the chest I understood, that groove is practically a riddim, it locks in and doesn’t let go! It’s not so far from the compas beat if you listen for the weight of it. Charlotte to Philadelphia, somebody in the Caribbean get this tour extended please!!
Chloe, the phrase ‘hit me in the chest’ is doing more work than it knows. The Arab classical tradition has a concept, tarab, this state of emotional transport that a great performance is supposed to produce in the listener, something that bypasses thought and lands directly in the body. You’ve just described it perfectly for a very different kind of music. I find it endlessly interesting that people arrive at the same experience through such wildly different doors.
Grew up hearing norteño and cumbia from my grandparents and classic rock from literally everywhere else in Texas, and the through-line I always noticed was rhythm and repetition. AC/DC does this thing where the riff just locks in and refuses to apologize, and that’s exactly the same principle. Power through conviction. I’m not a stadium person but this tour might change that.
I know AC/DC is not exactly the expected territory for me but I actually have a lot of time for what they do and the academic argument for them is underrated. There’s an almost folk music logic to their catalog, the same themes, the same structures, refined over decades, which is exactly what oral tradition music does. They are not trying to surprise you, they are trying to remind you of something you already knew. That is a legitimate artistic choice and it works.
Not exactly my world, AC/DC, but I’ll say this: there’s something to be said for a band that has never once pretended to be something it isn’t. In Afrobeats we talk a lot about authenticity, about staying connected to where the music actually comes from. AC/DC has that in their own way. You always know exactly what you’re getting. That’s rarer than people think.