Melbourne band The Temper Trap will celebrate the release of their long-awaited album Sungazer with a national Australian tour this September and October.
by Paul Cashmere
Melbourne indie rock band The Temper Trap have confirmed a national Australian headline tour for September and October 2026, marking the group’s most significant homecoming run in years as they prepare to release their fourth studio album Sungazer on 10 July.
For The Temper Trap, the announcement represents the next phase of a return that has been steadily building since the group re-emerged with new music over the past year.
The Melbourne performance at Forum Melbourne on 11 September launches the run before the band travels to Brisbane for Night At The Parkland the following night.
Adelaide follows on 16 September at Hindley Street Music Hall, with Sydney’s Night At The Barracks on 18 September. The tour concludes in Perth at ICF:Warehouse on 9 October.
The shows arrive two months after the release of Sungazer, a project that reconnects the band with a catalogue that has helped define Australian indie rock internationally since the late 2000s.
The new album arrives ten years after 2016’s Thick As Thieves, ending the longest recording gap in the band’s history. Across the record, The Temper Trap expand their sonic palette while maintaining the atmospheric guitar sound and soaring vocal style that first brought them international attention.
Songs such as Lucky Dimes and Giving Up Air lean into electronic textures and rhythmic energy, reflecting influences drawn from contemporary club production. Other tracks, including Into The Wild, return to the expansive indie rock arrangements that helped shape the band’s earliest recordings.
At the centre of the project remains the distinctive voice of vocalist Dougy Mandagi, whose high register has become one of the most recognisable signatures in Australian alternative music over the past two decades.
The band previously described Sungazer as a record shaped by personal change and renewed creative focus after an extended period away from regular touring and recording.
“With time apart and much personal growth from us all, Sungazer feels like it’s captured the most pure collection of music we’ve ever made,” the group said when the album was first revealed. “We had more fun making this record and in the writing room than on any of the previous records we’ve done.”
The Temper Trap first emerged in Melbourne in 2005 when Mandagi formed the group with bassist Jonathon Aherne and drummer Toby Dundas. After relocating to London early in their career, the band quickly developed an international audience through a combination of festival appearances and radio support.
Their breakthrough came with the 2009 debut album Conditions, which introduced the global hit Sweet Disposition. The song became one of the defining alternative singles of its era, eventually earning multi-platinum status in Australia and significant chart success across Europe.
The band followed with The Temper Trap in 2012 and Thick As Thieves in 2016, both debuting at number one on the ARIA Albums Chart. Over time their catalogue has accumulated billions of streams, while Sweet Disposition continues to circulate widely through remixes, film placements and festival playlists.
The group’s influence has extended beyond the indie rock space into electronic music culture. Recent remixes of Sweet Disposition and Giving Up Air have circulated widely among DJs, bringing the band’s music back into global club environments more than a decade after their initial breakthrough.
That renewed attention coincides with an increasingly active international touring schedule for the band in 2026. In addition to the Australian headline dates, The Temper Trap will spend July and August supporting British rock band Muse on a North American arena tour.
Festival appearances are also scheduled in the United States, including performances at Outside Lands in San Francisco and Summerfest in Milwaukee, where the group will share line-ups with artists including The Strokes, Rüfüs Du Sol and Charli XCX.
For Australian audiences, the upcoming tour represents the first opportunity to hear material from Sungazer in large venues across the country.
The band last toured Australia in 2025 with a series of smaller east coast shows, performances that served as an early reintroduction after several years of reduced activity while members pursued individual projects.
Now approaching two decades since their formation, The Temper Trap remain one of the most internationally recognised Australian alternative acts of the 2000s generation.
With a new album arriving in July and a national tour scheduled soon after, 2026 shapes as the most active year for the band since the mid-2010s.
Tickets for the Australian shows will first be available through a Frontier Touring member presale beginning 10am local time on Thursday 16 April, before general public sales open at 11am local time on Friday 17 April.
Dates are:
Friday 11 September
Forum Melbourne | Melbourne, VIC
*Saturday 12 September
Night At The Parkland | Brisbane, QLD
Wednesday 16 September
Hindley Street Music Hall | Adelaide, SA
Friday 18 September
Night At The Barracks | Sydney, NSW
Friday 9 October
ICF:Warehouse | Perth, WA
The Temper Trap – Sungazer
Lucky Dimes
Into The Wild
These Arms
Bird On A Wire
Giving Up Air
Sungazer
Lifeline
Runaways
Halfway
Dystopia Radio
Kuru
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