The Dandy Warhols will return to Australia and New Zealand in November and December 2026 for the Pin Ups tour, including a first Australian orchestral collaboration with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and an appearance at Meredith Festival.
by Paul Cashmere
The Dandy Warhols will return to Australia and New Zealand in November and December 2026 for a nine-date Pin Ups tour that will begin with a special performance alongside the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra in Hobart and conclude at Meredith Festival in Victoria. The tour marks the Portland band’s first Australian orchestral collaboration and follows two performances with the Oregon Symphony.
The Hobart concert at the Odeon Theatre on November 24 will give The Dandy Warhols an opportunity to rework material from their catalogue for orchestra before the tour moves through Auckland, Wellington, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Fremantle and Melbourne. The Australian and New Zealand dates will culminate with the band’s December 11 appearance at Meredith Festival.
The tour also provides the Australian debut of the band’s orchestral concept, which Courtney Taylor-Taylor says will be a different experience from the conventional Dandy Warhols show.
“The Oz tour is right around the corner and we are getting very pumped about it,” Taylor-Taylor said. “This one starts in Tasmania with the Symphony there, that will be a mind expanding trip.”
Taylor-Taylor also highlighted the band’s long association with Australia, describing the country as the band’s “second home” for almost three decades.
The Pin Ups tour takes its name from the band’s 2026 covers album, a collection drawn from recordings made at different points in the group’s career. The album brings together interpretations of songs associated with artists including The Beatles, The Byrds, The Clash, Bob Dylan, The Cure, Gang Of Four, The Cramps, The Cult, The Damned and Marilyn Manson.
Rather than being a conventional new studio album, Pin Ups gathers material from tribute projects, bonus tracks, B-sides and previously unreleased recordings. Taylor-Taylor has described the collection as a reflection of the artists who influenced The Dandy Warhols, noting that “nearly every band we cover on here are friends of ours or artists we have had a meaningful experience with.”
The album also places the band’s own catalogue in the context of the music that informed it. Since forming in Portland, Oregon in 1994, The Dandy Warhols have moved between psychedelic rock, alternative rock, shoegaze, garage rock and electronic textures without settling permanently into one style.
Their breakthrough came with …The Dandy Warhols Come Down in 1997 after the band signed with Capitol Records. The album produced three UK Top 40 singles and established the group internationally. Two years later, drummer Eric Hedford left the band and was replaced by Brent DeBoer, who remains part of the current line-up alongside Taylor-Taylor, Peter Holmström and Zia McCabe.
The band’s commercial profile expanded significantly with 2000’s Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia. “Bohemian Like You” became an international hit after receiving extensive exposure through advertising and television, while the album helped establish The Dandy Warhols as one of the defining alternative rock acts of the early 2000s.
The following years brought further changes in direction. Welcome To The Monkey House, produced by Duran Duran’s Nick Rhodes, incorporated a stronger synth-pop influence, with “We Used To Be Friends” becoming another enduring song from the catalogue. The band subsequently returned to a more guitar-oriented approach on Odditorium Or Warlords Of Mars and continued independently after ending its long association with Capitol.
The Dandy Warhols’ history was also documented in the 2004 film Dig!, which followed the band and The Brian Jonestown Massacre. Around the same period, David Bowie selected The Dandy Warhols for his 2002 Meltdown festival and subsequently took them on his 2003 A Reality Tour.
Their catalogue has continued to develop through albums including This Machine, Distortland, Why You So Crazy, Tafelmuzik Means More When You’re Alone and 2024’s Rockmaker, while the group has continued to revisit earlier material through archival releases and live projects.
For Aussie fans, the 2026 tour therefore combines several strands of the band’s history: a catalogue spanning more than three decades, a new covers collection built from long-running musical influences, and an orchestral presentation that has already been tested by the Oregon Symphony.
The tour will also take the band to Meredith, one of Australia’s established independent music festivals, for its final scheduled performance on December 11. The combination of the Hobart orchestral event and the Meredith appearance gives the Australian itinerary two distinctly different settings for a band whose career has consistently moved between studio experimentation, alternative rock and large-scale live performance.
Tour Dates
Tuesday, November 24, Hobart, Odeon Theatre with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra
Friday, November 27, Auckland, Powerstation
Saturday, November 28, Wellington, Meow Nui
Tuesday, December 1, Sydney, Enmore Theatre
Friday, December 4, Brisbane, Fortitude Music Hall
Saturday, December 5, Adelaide, Thebarton Theatre
Tuesday, December 8, Fremantle, Metropolis
Thursday, December 10, Melbourne, Palais Theatre
Friday, December 11, Meredith, Meredith Festival, VIC
Ticket Details
Spotify Presale: Friday, August 21 at 10am AEST. Code: DWAUS
Promoter Presale: Monday, August 24 at 10am AEST. Code: DW27
General On Sale: Tuesday, August 25 at 10am AEST
Ticket information: sbmpresents.com
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