Iron Maiden have spent 50 years turning heavy metal into a spectacle, and in 2026 they are bringing the biggest celebration of that run to North America. The band’s Run For Your Lives world tour, a victory lap marking half a century since they formed in London, lands on the continent this autumn with a setlist pulled entirely from their classic era and a farewell-touring thrash legend in support. For metal fans, it is shaping up to be the must-see run of the year.
Here is everything confirmed so far about Iron Maiden’s North American dates: the cities, the support acts, and what the band has promised to play.
Fifty Years of Iron Maiden, Distilled Into One Tour
Run For Your Lives is Iron Maiden’s 50th-anniversary tour, marking the years since bassist Steve Harris founded the band in London in 1975. Announced in September 2024, the world tour opened in Budapest in May 2025 and is scheduled to run all the way to Yokohama, Japan in November 2026. The concept is simple and, for long-time fans, irresistible: a setlist drawn only from the band’s first nine studio albums, the run of records that built the Iron Maiden legend in the 1980s.
That framing turns the tour into a greatest-hits celebration by design, skipping the deep modern cuts in favour of the material that made Maiden a stadium act. It is the band leaning into its own mythology for a milestone, and the demand has followed. Few bands have earned a lap like this: Iron Maiden have sold tens of millions of albums, headlined festivals on every continent, and built one of the most devoted fan bases in music, and a 50th-anniversary run is exactly the kind of event that following turns out for in force.
The North American Run: From Toronto to the Alamodome
The North American leg opens on August 29, 2026 at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto and closes a month later on September 29 at the Alamodome in San Antonio. In between, the routing hits Montreal, Harrison in New Jersey, Boston, Bristow in Virginia, Charlotte, Hershey, the Louder Than Life festival in Louisville, Shakopee in Minnesota, Chicago and Los Angeles, mixing arenas, amphitheatres and stadiums.
It is a compact, high-impact run rather than a sprawling months-long trek, which only sharpens the competition for tickets. Several of the dates sit at major sheds and festival slots, and with Maiden’s production this is a show built for the biggest rooms available.
Iron Maiden 2026 North American Tour Dates
Here is the full run of confirmed North American dates for the Run For Your Lives tour, spanning arenas, amphitheatres, stadiums and two festival appearances across the United States and Canada:
- August 29, Toronto, ON, Scotiabank Arena
- September 3, Montreal, QC, Parc Jean-Drapeau
- September 5, Harrison, NJ, Sports Illustrated Stadium
- September 9, Boston, MA, TD Garden
- September 11, Bristow, VA, Jiffy Lube Live
- September 12, Charlotte, NC, PNC Music Pavilion
- September 15, Hershey, PA, Hersheypark Stadium
- September 17, Louisville, KY, Louder Than Life Festival
- September 19, Shakopee, MN, Mystic Lake Amphitheater
- September 22, Chicago, IL, Credit Union 1 Amphitheatre
- September 25, Los Angeles, CA, BMO Stadium
- September 29, San Antonio, TX, Alamodome
The spread of venues tells its own story. Iron Maiden are comfortable headlining a hockey arena in Boston one week and a full stadium in San Antonio the next, and the two festival slots put them in front of crowds who may not have caught the band since the last tour cycle.
Megadeth’s Farewell, and Anthrax, in Support
The undercard is a story in itself. Megadeth support every North American date, and Anthrax join on the larger shows, putting three titans of metal on one bill. What gives the pairing weight is timing: Megadeth are in the middle of their own farewell tour, the last of Dave Mustaine’s long career fronting the band.
“It’s an honour to have them join us on their last ever tour,” Steve Harris said of Megadeth. That farewell framing comes with a caveat, though. Mustaine told Kerrang! in late 2025 that the band are “easily talking about touring for another three to five years”, so fans should read the goodbye as the start of a long lap rather than a final bow. Megadeth’s own farewell shows have leaned hard on the hits, with early sets running to 17 songs and only a pair drawn from their new self-titled album.
What Iron Maiden Will Play
Bruce Dickinson has been unusually specific about the setlist. “We’ve got all the big ones from that early period including Hallowed, Run To The Hills, Trooper, Number Of The Beast, Killers, Powerslave, 2 Minutes,” the frontman said, name-checking the cornerstones of the 1980s catalogue. For anyone who came to Maiden through The Number of the Beast or Powerslave, that is close to a dream list.
The nine-album cut-off means the show sidesteps the band’s more recent, longer-form material in favour of tight, anthemic classics, the songs built for arms-aloft singalongs. Paired with Maiden’s theatrical staging, it is engineered to feel like a celebration rather than a career survey. It is also a smart piece of setlist strategy: by capping the show at the first nine albums, Maiden guarantee an evening of songs almost every ticket-holder already knows by heart, the shared catalogue that turns a concert into an event.
A Phones-Down Show and Full-Scale Production
There is one notable request attached to the run. After its European shows, the tour is asking fans to keep their phones in their pockets during the performance, a policy pushed by longtime manager Rod Smallwood to keep the audience present and the atmosphere intact. It is a growing trend among heritage acts, and Maiden are betting their fans will trade the recording for the experience. For a band whose shows are as much theatre as concert, that request is less a restriction than an invitation to watch the spectacle unfold without a screen in the way.
Backing that up is the production Maiden are famous for: elaborate stage sets, pyrotechnics, and the ever-present mascot Eddie looming over proceedings. The Run For Your Lives staging is built to match the scale of the milestone, and it is a big part of why these shows keep selling out.
Why This Tour Matters for Rock in 2026
Iron Maiden’s run arrives in a year when heavy music’s old guard and its new wave are both drawing huge crowds. Legacy acts are filling stadiums on the strength of catalogue and spectacle, even as modern bands like Sleep Token reshape what a rock headliner looks like in 2026. Maiden sit firmly on the heritage side of that divide, and Run For Your Lives is a reminder of how much pull five decades of catalogue still carries. The contrast is part of what makes 2026 an unusually strong year for live rock, with veterans and newcomers competing for the same festival headline slots and arena weekends, and audiences happy to buy tickets for both.
For fans, though, the appeal needs no analysis. It is Iron Maiden, at 50, playing the songs that defined them, with a farewell-touring Megadeth for company and a stage show built to overwhelm. If there is a single metal ticket worth chasing in 2026, this is it.
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