U2 to play Belfast as part of European tour, but date and venue still a mystery
IRISH rockers U2 are to perform in Belfast as part of their Experience + Innocence tour this year.
The band confirmed the gig yesterday, along with peformances in Dublin, London and Manchester.
The date and venue are yet to be made public.
Tickets go on sale on January 26.
The band last played Belfast in November 2015 on their Innocence + Experience tour, their first appearance in the city in two decades.
That tour was named the number one concert of 2015 by the New York Times. U2 will kick off their 2018 schedule in the US at the BOK Centre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on May 2.
The European leg will begin in Berlin on August 31 and take in a string of dates including Cologne, Hamburg, Paris, Madrid, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Milan, Manchester and London.
In addition, there will be special home shows in their native Dublin and in Belfast.
It’s rumoured that the 3Arena is on the cards for the Dublin leg of the tour.
Unlike their last outing on the road, The Joshua Tree — a special anniversary tour for their acclaimed 1987 album — in which they played to huge stadium audiences around the world, including Croke Park’s 82,000 fans, this time they have pared things back.
A follow-up to Songs Of Innocence was released on December 1 and features 13 new songs, including the second single Get Out Of Your Own Way, which is out now.
The first single from the collection, You’re The Best Thing About Me, written about
Bono’s wife Ali Hewson, was released in September.
Bono (left) recently said that the album was influenced by Irish poet and writer Brendan Kennelly’s advice to “write as if you’re dead”. Recorded in Dublin, London and LA, the result is a series of songs in the form of letters to people and places close to the singer’s heart.
U2 were formed more than 40 years ago in Dublin and scored a UK number 1 album in 1983 with War, which included the single Bloody Sunday Bloody inspired by the killing of 14 civil rights demonstrators by the Army in Londonderry in January 1972.
The Joshua Tree, the band’s fifth album, brought them international stardom in 1987, before they went on to reinvent themselves in the 1990s.
U2’s most recent album was Songs Of Experience, their 14th studio long player.
It followed 2014’s Songs Of Innocence. That album was released through the iTunes Store, and drew criticism for its automatic placement in users’ music libraries, whether they were fans or not.