Skip to Content
News

Tokyo’s Summer Sonic Festival Teases Radiohead For 2027

2:11 PM EDT on August 14, 2026

KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP via Getty Images

Radiohead returned to the stage in late 2025 for the first time in seven years, playing 20 shows broken up into a series of four-night residencies in major European cities. During the promo campaign for his new solo album Blue Morpho, Ed O'Brien mentioned Radiohead's tentative plans to repeat this method of touring going forward, potentially doing 20 shows a year, visiting a different continent each time, starting in 2027. He's since hedged a bit, saying 20 shows is more like the maximum number of shows they'd play in a year. But it does seem like the band has plans to hit the road next year.

The Japanese music festival Summer Sonic plays out over two weekends, one in Tokyo, one in Osaka. Radiohead have history with the fest; they headlined in 2003 and 2016, and Thom Yorke played a Summer Sonic-sponsored club show with his Tomorrow's Modern Boxes setup in 2015. It looks like they may be headed back that way.

The Tokyo edition of Summer Sonic kicked off today. At one point, the fest's video screens broadcast a quick teaser video featuring live concert footage of Radiohead, concluding with an all-caps "TOKYO 2027." Video footage of this moment can be seen on Reddit, and since the Reddit video isn't embedding properly, here it is on TikTok too:

It will be interesting to see how many shows they play — and if they ever deign to return to a little continent called North America.

GET THE STEREOGUM DIGEST

The week's most important music stories and least important music memes.