Just weeks after announcing a 26-date summer tour of North America, QUEEN + ADAM LAMBERT have revealed further live plans for 2017, which will now see the band return to Europe later this year for a series of 24 dates, including 12 arena concerts in the U.K. and Ireland. The tour will showcase a spectacular new stage production and a set list that the band hints will provide some surprises. QUEEN + ADAM LAMBERT's 11-city U.K. and Ireland tour will kick off in Dublin on November 25. They perform in Belfast in Northern Ireland the following day, then reach mainland Britain on November 28 to play Liverpool's Echo Arena. More dates follow in Birmingham, Newcastle, Glasgow, Nottingham, Leeds, Sheffield and Manchester, climaxing with two huge London shows at the O2 Arena on December 12 and The SSE Arena, Wembley, on December 15. Tickets will be on general sale from Friday, April 21, with pre-sales starting two days earlier, Wednesday, April 19. The tour is presented by Phil McIntyre Entertainments. These shows will mark the band's first full British tour in almost three years, having last performed across the U.K. in January 2015 when they played 10 sold-out shows. Their only U.K. appearance in 2016 was a one-off headlining set at the closing night of the Isle Of Wight festival on Sunday, June 12, part of a 15-date European summer festival tour. Isle Of Wight festival organizer John Giddings credited the band with "the greatest show we have ever had." For their 2017 tour, the band will unveil a brand new show including a specially designed state-of-the-art production. The choice of performance material will no doubt acknowledge this year's 40th anniversary of QUEEN's biggest-selling studio album to date, "News Of The World" from 1977, which yielded the immortal anthems "We Will Rock You" and "We Are the Champions". QUEEN drummer and co-founder Roger Taylor insists the 2017 tour "will look entirely different to the show we took around before. Production has really changed a lot, the things you can do now, you have a much broader palette, the technology has really come along. But we don't use it all. We don't play to click track. It's 100% live. We're planning on doing stuff we either haven't done before or haven't done for a long time. We started as an albums band, that's what we were. The fact that we had hits was just a byproduct." Guitarist Brian May confirms QUEEN's 2017 shows will have a more ambitious musical agenda. "The general public knows the hits, so you've got to cater for that," he says, "but we can chuck in a few things that people really don't expect. We'll do quite a bit more of that this time around. There are so many dimensions to Adam, which, of course, fits with our music. He can get down and do the rock stuff really dirty, and you have all those dimensions, and we can explore that even more." Adam Lambert welcomes the challenge of digging deeper into the band's canon of classics. "What people should know if they came to the shows a couple of years back, is obviously we will still be playing the big hit songs you know and love from QUEEN, but we thought it would be good to challenge ourselves a bit," he explains. "Change it up a little bit, change the visuals, change all the technology, change the set list to some degree. We will probably be pulling some other songs out of the QUEEN catalogue which we haven't done before, which I am very excited about. QUEEN + ADAM LAMBERT European tour dates 2017: Nov. 01 - Prague, Czech Republic - O2 Arena Nov. 02 - Munich, Germany - Olympiahalle Nov. 04 - Budapest, Hungary - Sportarena Nov. 06 - Lodz, Poland - Atlas Arena Nov. 08 - Vienna, Austria - Stadhalle Nov. 10 - Bologna, Italy - Unipol Arena Nov. 12 - Luxembourg, Amneville - Galaxie Nov. 13 - Amsterdam, Netherlands - Ziggo Dome Nov. 17 - Kaunas, Lithuania - Zalgiris Arena Nov. 25 - Dublin, Ireland - 3 Arena Nov. 26 - Belfast, Ireland - SSE Arena Nov. 28 - Liverpool, UK - Echo Arena Nov. 30 - Birmingham, UK - Barclaycard Arena Dec. 01 - Newcastle, UK - Metro Radio Arena Dec. 03 - Glasgow, UK - The SSE Hydro Dec. 05 - Nottingham, UK - Motorpoint Arena Dec. 06 - Leeds, UK - First Direct Arena Dec. 08 - Sheffield, UK - Motorpoint Arena Dec. 09 - Manchester, UK - Arena Dec. 12 - London, UK - 02 Arena Dec. 15 - London, UK - The SSE Arena, Wembley
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