Radiohead 2025 tour: European return brings four-night residencies to London, Berlin and Madrid

Seven years off the road, then twenty nights in five cities

Seven years is a long time to wait for a band built for the stage. Radiohead is ending that drought with a 20-date European run in November and December 2025, a stretch of four-night residencies in five major arenas rather than a city‑a‑night sprint. Announced on September 3, the plan is simple: fewer stops, more time in each, and room to build the kind of immersive shows that first turned their tours into events.

The itinerary reads like a greatest-hits map of European arenas. The tour opens in Spain at Madrid’s Movistar Arena on November 4, 5, 7 and 8. From there, it heads to Italy for Bologna’s Unipol Arena on November 14, 15, 17 and 18. London gets four nights at The O2 on November 21, 22, 24 and 25. Copenhagen’s Royal Arena hosts December 1, 2, 4 and 5. Berlin closes it out at the Uber Arena on December 8, 9, 11 and 12. Twenty shows, five cities, four nights each—straightforward and designed for demand.

For context, this is the band’s first tour since 2018. A lot happened in the gap. Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood spent the past few years on The Smile, releasing two albums and touring, while Ed O’Brien and Phil Selway pursued solo work. Radiohead, meanwhile, stayed mostly quiet as a unit. The return in late 2025 suggests they’re ready to switch the lights back on for a crowd that never really left.

The residency model matters. Setting up camp for four nights in each city lets the group fine‑tune production, experiment with setlists and reduce the grind of daily travel. It also helps venues and crews run more efficiently. Fans benefit too: multiple dates in one place create more chances to get in without a scramble for a single night.

These rooms are built for spectacle but can feel surprisingly intimate when configured with Radiohead’s typical stage craft. Past tours leaned on rich lighting design, layered video and a sound mix that favors detail over brute force. Expect that to continue. When a band has this many textures—from the weight of The Bends and OK Computer to the minimal pulse of Kid A and the orchestral drift of A Moon Shaped Pool—the production needs space to breathe.

What about the songs? The band is promising a career-spanning set, which leaves plenty of room for show-to-show changes. If history is any guide, mainstays like Paranoid Android, Karma Police and Everything In Its Right Place will share space with deeper cuts—Pyramid Song, There There, Weird Fishes/Arpeggi—rotated through the run. Fans who chase multiple nights tend to get rewarded with those left‑field turns. Residencies make that kind of nightly evolution easier.

It’s worth remembering why Radiohead shows carry this reputation in the first place. They shift gears live without losing the thread: guitars and samplers, glitch beats and piano ballads, a slow build that pays off. That blend, along with the band’s habit of reinventing familiar songs on stage, is what keeps queues long years after radio singles faded from rotation.

The choice of cities tracks with where their audience is thickest and where the production can run at full capacity. Madrid bookends the Iberian demand. Bologna gives the tour a northern Italy base without splitting nights across Milan and Florence. London, of course, is home ground. Copenhagen covers Scandinavia neatly, and Berlin has become a durable anchor for international arena tours—good access, technical crews who’ve seen everything, and a crowd that shows up early.

There’s another quiet benefit to sticking to a handful of hubs: sustainability. Fewer trucks moving every night and longer stays in each venue reduce the emissions that pile up on constant travel. Radiohead has talked for years about touring smarter. This routing lines up with that mindset, even if the band hasn’t spelled out a formal sustainability plan for 2025 yet.

The seven-year pause raises the obvious question: is there new music coming? The tour announcement doesn’t say. Radiohead’s catalog is deep enough to fill multiple nights without a fresh single, and the members have been musically active throughout the hiatus. But this band likes surprises. New arrangements, a reworked classic or an unreleased piece sneaking into the encore wouldn’t be out of character.

The cultural context has shifted too. When they last toured, arena ticketing, face-value protections and dynamic pricing were already hot issues. They’re even hotter now. Fans judge bands not just on the show but on the system that gets them into the building. That’s where the registration approach comes in.

Tickets, demand and how the registration works

To manage demand and curb bots, Radiohead is using a registration-first system through the band’s official website. Registration opened at 10:00 AM BST on Friday, September 5, and closed at 10:00 PM BST on Sunday, September 7. Fans were asked for their name, email, mobile number and city of residence. It’s a familiar model in 2025: gather interest, verify accounts, then release purchase details to those approved. The goal is to give genuine fans a fair shot instead of letting scalpers and scripts sweep the cart in seconds.

Approval doesn’t always guarantee a ticket, especially for residencies that will draw heavy travel from neighboring countries. But registration helps throttle demand into manageable waves. It also gives promoters a clear read on where pressure is highest, which matters when each city has only four nights and thousands of people trying to land the same seats.

What should fans expect on pricing and access? The announcement doesn’t list prices. In recent years, major arena tours across Europe have used a mix of standard pricing and limited premium tiers, with some seats set aside to keep entry-level options available. Whether Radiohead adopts any dynamic model or sticks closer to fixed pricing will be closely watched. Fans have long memories about how ticketing feels—transparent or not, fair or not—and those impressions can linger longer than a setlist.

One practical tip if you’re selected to buy: be flexible on nights within the same city. With four shows in each stop, the difference between getting in and being shut out often comes down to picking a midweek date or shifting from the opener to the closer. Also be ready to choose between floor and bowl rather than hunting a specific section. You can always trade with friends later if plans change.

For those mapping travel, the residency structure helps. If you miss London, a short flight or train to Copenhagen or Berlin might be easier than waiting for a second UK run that may never come. And because the shows cluster tightly—Madrid early November, then Italy, then the UK, then Denmark, then Germany—you can plan around weekend anchors or bolt a city break onto the gig.

The demand picture is easy to read: enormous. Radiohead’s last European arena dates drew multi-night sell-outs, and the seven-year gap only concentrates interest. Expect queues, digital waiting rooms and quick sell-throughs. Expect fan forums trading setlist notes every night. And expect the usual post-sale churn as extra tickets pop up from people who double-booked nights during the registration window.

Production-wise, multi-night stands open the door for bolder staging. Building and testing an ambitious rig on night one, then refining it over three more, is a luxury single-night stops don’t allow. The band has long worked with visual designers who understand that Radiohead’s music relies on negative space as much as light and sound. That translates to shows where silence and shadow hit as hard as the big crescendos.

Setlist imagination is where residencies really shine. Think of a Madrid opener stacked with familiar anchors to reset the stage after seven years away, followed by nights two and three with deep cuts and left turns, then a closer that ties both threads together. London, being home territory, often gets the widest swings. Copenhagen and Berlin crowds tend to be up for risk, which encourages bands to stretch. Bologna’s history of passionate, vocal audiences nudges the energy up another notch.

For longtime fans, part of the appeal is hearing how the band stitches eras together. The crunch of The Bends sliding into Kid A’s electronics. The groove-forward In Rainbows material powering the middle of a set. The orchestral lean of A Moon Shaped Pool bringing a late-show hush. When it works, you get a narrative without a narrator—three decades of ideas that feel like one continuous line.

If you’re plotting which city fits your schedule, here’s the snapshot:

• Madrid – Movistar Arena: November 4, 5, 7, 8
• Bologna – Unipol Arena: November 14, 15, 17, 18
• London – The O2: November 21, 22, 24, 25
• Copenhagen – Royal Arena: December 1, 2, 4, 5
• Berlin – Uber Arena: December 8, 9, 11, 12

That’s the backbone of the Radiohead 2025 tour, and it’s built to handle demand while giving the band room to be the band. Four nights per city is a quiet vote of confidence: trust that people will travel, trust that each show will feel different, trust that the music still lands.

Seven years since the last run, Radiohead remains one of the few arena acts with a catalog that can pivot night to night without feeling programmed. That’s why these dates matter. They’re not just a comeback; they’re a chance to see one of the most shape-shifting groups of the past 30 years take another swing at the live show, with time and space to get it right.