Fatboy Slim will return to Australia in March 2027 for seven shows across Fremantle, Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne, with the tour built around four distinctly different venues including Melbourne’s new The Underpass.
by Paul Cashmere
Fatboy Slim will return to Australia in March 2027 with seven performances across Fremantle, Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne, including three Sydney shows at Carriageworks and two performances at Melbourne’s newly established The Underpass.
The tour will take Norman Cook, the DJ and producer behind Fatboy Slim, away from the large festival stages and conventional clubs that have characterised much of his career. Instead, the Australian dates will use a heritage arts complex, a riverside forecourt, an oceanfront park and a new urban electronic music site.
Cook says the choice of venues was deliberate.
“For this tour to Australia I wanted to get up close with my people, play venues with real atmosphere and have a proper party,” he says. “Bridges, rivers, parks, old railway sheds, if it’s a bit weird and the sound system’s loud enough, I’m there.”
The Melbourne dates will introduce Australian audiences to The Underpass, a new event space at 542 Footscray Road in West Melbourne. The location is positioned beneath major elevated transport infrastructure and has been developed as an inner-Melbourne setting for large-scale electronic music events. Its first announced events include performances by UK electronic duo Bicep in November 2026.
For Fatboy Slim, the setting provides a different environment from the established Melbourne festival circuit, while retaining the industrial character associated with much of the city’s electronic music history.
The Sydney performances will take place inside Carriageworks, the former Eveleigh railway workshops that have become one of the city’s major contemporary arts venues. Brisbane will see Cook perform at the South Bank Forecourt for the return of On The Banks, while Fremantle’s Esplanade Park will provide the Western Australian setting.
The dates follow a significant period of international activity for Cook. His recent schedule has included major festival appearances and large outdoor performances, while his Australian visit will instead emphasise the contrast between different environments and the relationship between the DJ and the audience.
The musical foundation remains familiar. Cook’s sets continue to draw on more than three decades of Fatboy Slim material, including “The Rockafeller Skank”, “Praise You”, “Right Here Right Now” and “Weapon Of Choice”. His more recent repertoire includes “Satisfaction Skank”, which combines his “The Rockafeller Skank” with The Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”, and “Funk Drunk”, his collaboration with Brazilian DJ Carola and Felix Da Housecat.
Fatboy Slim’s career began well before the name became synonymous with big beat. Cook first became widely known as the bassist in The Housemartins, whose “Caravan Of Love” reached number one in the UK in 1986. After the group split, he moved into dance music, establishing Beats International and producing the 1990 UK number-one single “Dub Be Good To Me”.
He subsequently worked under several names, including Freak Power, Pizzaman and the Mighty Dub Katz, before adopting Fatboy Slim in the mid-1990s. Better Living Through Chemistry, released in 1996, established the project and its combination of breakbeats, samples, funk, hip-hop, rock and pop structures.
The breakthrough came with 1998’s You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby. “The Rockafeller Skank”, “Praise You” and “Right Here Right Now” turned Cook into one of the defining figures of the late 1990s electronic boom. Halfway Between The Gutter And The Stars followed in 2000, producing “Weapon Of Choice”, whose Spike Jonze-directed video featured Christopher Walken dancing through a hotel and became one of the era’s most recognised music videos.
Cook’s relationship with large communal events was reinforced through his Big Beach Boutique performances on Brighton beach. The second event in 2002 attracted an estimated 250,000 people, making it one of the defining moments of his career.
In the years since, Cook has increasingly concentrated on DJ performances rather than conventional album-making. His catalogue has continued to circulate through new remixes, collaborations and live sets, while tracks such as “Eat, Sleep, Rave, Repeat”, “Praising You” with Rita Ora and “Role Model” have extended the Fatboy Slim repertoire.
That history makes the format of the 2027 Australian tour notable. Rather than replicating a single large-scale production across four cities, each location has its own physical identity. The Underpass is the newest addition, transforming an unconventional piece of West Melbourne’s urban landscape into a dedicated electronic music environment. Its debut schedule demonstrates that the site is being positioned for dance music events before Cook’s March 2027 appearances.
Tour Dates
3 March 2027, Fremantle, Esplanade Park
5 March 2027, Sydney, Carriageworks
6 March 2027, Sydney, Carriageworks
7 March 2027, Sydney, Carriageworks
10 March 2027, Brisbane, On The Banks, South Bank Forecourt
12 March 2027, Melbourne, The Underpass
13 March 2027, Melbourne, The Underpass
Ticket Details
Presale registration: Monday 14 September 2026, 9am local time
General tickets: Tuesday 15 September 2026, 9am local time
Official website: Fatboy Slim
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