Sex Pistols featuring Frank Carter add six new UK dates to their winter 2026 ’50 Years of Punk’ tour. Here’s the full list.
Fifty years on from the year that lit the fuse, the Sex Pistols are not slowing down. The reconstituted punk icons, fronted by Frank Carter, have announced a raft of new UK dates for their winter 2026 “50 Years of Punk” tour, expanding a run that already stood as one of the most anticipated live celebrations of punk’s golden anniversary. The additions widen a schedule built to mark five decades since 1976, the year the band’s original lineup rewrote the rules of British music.
The expansion beefs up an already substantial itinerary. The tour was initially set to kick off at Dublin’s 3Arena on December 7, with further dates at Edinburgh’s Corn Exchange, Glasgow’s O2 Academy, and two London shows at Brixton Academy and the Eventim Apollo. Now six more stops have been added, taking the band to Leeds O2 Academy, Newcastle NX, Liverpool Olympia, Birmingham O2 Academy, Portsmouth Guildhall, and Bristol’s Prospect Building. It is a proper nationwide victory lap rather than a token anniversary gesture.
The Ghosts of 1976
The tour’s framing leans hard into history, and for good reason. 1976 was punk’s so-called Year Zero, the moment the Sex Pistols set everything in motion with a string of now-mythic gigs at venues like The Marquee, The 100 Club, The Nashville, and a residency at the El Paradiso strip club. Their June 4 show at Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall, and a follow-up weeks later, famously pushed future members of Joy Division, New Order, The Smiths, The Fall, and Buzzcocks to start their own bands. By that September’s 100 Club Punk Special, the Pistols were leading a full-blown movement.
Guitarist Steve Jones, drummer Paul Cook, and bassist Glen Matlock, the surviving core of that original chaos, have been candid about how raw it all was. “It was kind of like a commando raid,” Cook recalled of the early days. “I don’t even think a lot of places knew we were playing there. We just turned up and set up. It was all a learning curve for us, getting out there and playing live, we were learning on the job.” That spirit, he suggested, was the whole point. “The message was pretty simple, just have a go and get out there and do whatever you want to do.”
A New Frontman and an Old Fire
The reason this anniversary run carries genuine heat, rather than nostalgia-circuit fatigue, is Frank Carter. Formerly of Gallows and Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes, the vocalist joined Jones, Cook, and Matlock in 2024 to help save London’s iconic Bush Hall, and the pairing clicked immediately. Carter has drawn rave reviews for the energy and freshness he brings to the material, and the new lineup has been going strong ever since. In 2025 the group toured the world, tearing through Japan and Australia, hitting European festivals, and delivering a Royal Albert Hall show for the Teenage Cancer Trust where Carter conjured a giant circle pit.
The critical response has been striking for a band five decades deep. The Guardian called the shows a “rip-roaring punk rock redux,” Louder declared that “with Frank Carter up front, the Sex Pistols sound like the world’s greatest punk band once more,” and The Standard raved that “they sounded like the slickest garage band you’ve ever heard.” That praise reframes the project as a living concern rather than a heritage act.
The obvious question is whether new music might follow, and the band remains split. Matlock has said the group has “ideas” and praised Carter as “a very good lyricist,” while acknowledging they have been too busy to develop them. Jones, ever the provocateur, is skeptical. “I think if you do anything new and you’re playing it live, that’s when people go and get a drink,” he quipped. “When was the last time you heard a good Rolling Stones song?” For now, the focus is the live show, and the message is the same one from 1976. Just get out there and do it. Tickets for the new dates are available now.
