The Horrors will make a long-awaited return to Australia in April 2026 for their first national headline tour in more than a decade, marking the band’s most extensive run of shows in the country since 2012.
Earlier this year, the Southend-on-Sea outfit delivered a hypnotic set at Hobart’s Dark Mofo festival and played a special Live at 3RRR performance for Melbourne fans. The brief visit rekindled their connection with Australian audiences after years away from local stages. Next year’s tour will see them headline shows in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Perth.
The 2026 visit arrives as The Horrors enter a new creative chapter with their sixth studio album Night Life, released in 2025. Described as a record of “weight and space, of melancholy and euphoria”, Night Life captures the shadowy introspection that has long defined the band’s work, while drawing energy from the instinctive rawness of their early years. It’s not an album about the buzz of late-night crowds, but rather the solitude and imagination that emerges after dark – the thoughts and moods that surface when the rest of the world sleeps.
Since forming in 2005, The Horrors have remained one of the UK’s most sonically adventurous and visually distinctive bands. Their origins were steeped in garage rock and gothic punk, emerging from London’s underground club scene with an art-school edge and a fascination for obscure vinyl. Their debut album Strange House (2007) introduced them as thrilling outliers in the post-punk revival, while their sophomore record Primary Colours (2009) – produced in part by Portishead’s Geoff Barrow – dramatically shifted their sound toward synth-laced shoegaze and earned them a Mercury Prize nomination.
The band’s third album Skying (2011) proved a breakthrough moment, winning the NME Award for Best Album and expanding their sonic palette into dreamlike psychedelia. By 2017, The Horrors had evolved again with V, a record hailed by The Guardian as “a triumph”, and in 2021, their Lout and Against The Blade EPs delved into industrial noise and electronic experimentation, reaffirming their appetite for reinvention.
Across two decades, The Horrors have blurred boundaries between post-punk, shoegaze, trip-hop, and electronic textures, while maintaining a cohesive identity built on atmosphere and intensity. Their music has often been described as cinematic – equal parts menace and beauty – a description perfectly captured in the recent Dark Mofo review that called their performance “a sonically wondrous journey”.
The band’s lineup has evolved in recent years. Founding members Faris Badwan (vocals), Joshua Hayward (guitar), and Rhys Webb (bass) now perform alongside keyboardist and vocalist Amelia Kidd (of The Ninth Wave) and drummer Jordan Cook (of Telegram). Their inclusion has refreshed the group’s live energy, blending the classic Horrors moodiness with a sharper, more modern edge.
Night Life marks their sixth studio album following Strange House (2007), Primary Colours (2009), Skying (2011), Luminous (2014), and V (2017). Each of these records charted within the UK Top 40, securing The Horrors’ reputation as one of Britain’s most consistent and inventive alternative acts.
THE HORRORS – NIGHT LIFE AUSTRALIA 2026
Friday 10 April – Princess Theatre, Brisbane
Saturday 11 April – Manning Bar, Sydney
Sunday 12 April – Northcote Theatre, Melbourne
Tuesday 14 April – Lion Arts Factory, Adelaide
Wednesday 15 April – Rosemount, Perth
Presale: Friday 31 October, 9.00am local time
General On Sale: Monday 3 November, 9.00am local time
https://thephoenix.au/horrors-2026/
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