Angus & Julia Stone open world tour in Australia: six concerts for the album Karaoke Bar
Australian duo Angus & Julia Stone will launch their new world tour with a major series of concerts in Australia in February and March 2027, following the release of the album Karaoke Bar. The schedule announced on September 7, 2026, includes six performances in five cities: Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney and Perth. Melbourne is the only city with two consecutive nights, while Sydney has a confirmed outdoor concert on the Forecourt in front of the Sydney Opera House. According to the tour announcement reported by Australian music media, the Australian stages will open the Karaoke Bar World Tour, meaning audiences there will be among the first to hear the new material in a full concert setting. The tour begins on February 13 in Adelaide, and the Australian leg ends on March 5 in Perth.
The announcement comes only a few days after the release of the album Karaoke Bar, which came out on September 4, 2026, and marks a new chapter in the brother-and-sister duo's nearly twenty-year career together. The duo's official website lists ten songs on the album, including the title track Karaoke Bar, Monroe, Celestial Bodies, The Start, Strangely Strangely, Brightest Place, Take Me Back to Japan, Cowgirls Lover Boi, The Cherry Farm and Mexico City. Unlike concerts that rely on only one new record, the announced tour is expected to connect the current material with songs that marked earlier phases of their work. In its announcement for the concert, the Sydney Opera House explicitly states that the new album will meet familiar songs from the duo's wider catalogue on stage.
Six concerts in five major Australian cities
The Australian leg of the tour has been designed as a concentrated series of performances over three weeks. The first concert will take place at Adelaide Entertainment Centre Theatre in Adelaide on February 13, 2027, followed by The Fortitude Music Hall in Brisbane on February 20. The duo then heads to Melbourne, where two nights have been booked at Forum Melbourne, on February 25 and 26. Sydney is scheduled for February 28, when Angus & Julia Stone will perform in the outdoor Forecourt space in front of the Sydney Opera House. The finale of the Australian series is scheduled for March 5 at Kings Park and Botanic Garden in Perth.
- February 13, 2027 - Adelaide Entertainment Centre Theatre, Adelaide
- February 20, 2027 - The Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane
- February 25, 2027 - Forum Melbourne, Melbourne
- February 26, 2027 - Forum Melbourne, Melbourne
- February 28, 2027 - Sydney Opera House Forecourt, Sydney
- March 5, 2027 - Kings Park and Botanic Garden, Perth
The schedule shows that the tour is not relying on stadiums, but on a combination of theatre, club and outdoor venues with different characteristics. Adelaide Entertainment Centre Theatre and The Fortitude Music Hall provide a more enclosed concert setting, Forum Melbourne brings two consecutive nights in one of the city's best-known venues, while Sydney and Perth give the tour a distinctly open-air format. Such a choice of venues suits the duo's music, which over the years has moved between intimate folk-pop expression and more lavish arrangements suitable for large festival stages. In practical terms, the series also allows the new album to be presented in different concert environments before the world tour moves on to its next destinations.
Sydney Opera House among the tour's central highlights
Particular attention is being drawn to the February 28 concert on the Sydney Opera House Forecourt, an outdoor space in front of one of the world's most recognisable concert buildings. The Sydney Opera House confirms that the performance is intended for all ages and presents it as the duo's return to the Forecourt as part of their first national headline tour following the sold-out Living Room Sessions performances in 2024. For Angus & Julia Stone, the concert also has an additional biographical dimension because both were born in Sydney, and the city is an important part of their musical story. In an interview with Rolling Stone Australia/New Zealand, Julia Stone said that she was especially looking forward to returning to the location and explained that they wanted an outdoor space in Sydney for this tour. The announced date is therefore not just one stop on the schedule, but also one of the most symbolically significant concerts of the entire Australian leg of the tour.
The Sydney Opera House Forecourt has for years been a venue for major contemporary music performances, but it retains a different atmosphere from a traditional arena or stadium. The concert takes place directly by the harbour, outdoors, which suits the late-February summer date in the Southern Hemisphere. Organisers are presenting the performance as part of the contemporary music programme rather than as a standalone festival event. For the audience, this means a full concert evening devoted to the Angus & Julia Stone repertoire, with the new songs at the centre of the programme and older material expected to connect different phases of their career. A final setlist has not been published in the available announcements, so the details of the set remain open for now.
Karaoke Bar was created between Greece, France and Australia
The album Karaoke Bar was released on September 4, 2026, and according to information accompanying the tour announcement, it was written and recorded between Greece, France and Australia. That geographical range is important for understanding the record because it was created during a period of intensive travel, following international touring cycles and work on the previous release Cape Forestier. Australian media outlets that spoke with Julia Stone describe the new material as the result of creating in multiple locations, including experiences in Greece and work in France. The album's title is connected to an experience in a karaoke bar on the Greek island of Hydra, while individual songs were developed from personal memories, travel and family themes. Rather than being created during one closed studio period, the record therefore took shape across a series of separate places and phases of life.
The official track list shows that the album consists of ten compositions. Among the previously introduced titles are Karaoke Bar, Monroe, Celestial Bodies and The Cherry Farm, and The Cherry Farm in particular became one of the key introductions to the album campaign. In interviews surrounding the record's release, Julia Stone spoke about the song in the context of memory, loss and the passage of time, linking it to a personal experience involving a former plan for a property that later became a cherry orchard. That approach continues one of the most recognisable characteristics of the duo's work: intimate motifs transformed into songs that rely not on a grand production gesture, but on atmosphere, melody and the relationship between two voices. At the same time, reviews of the new release also note an expansion of the sound beyond the acoustic roots for which Angus & Julia Stone became known.
From A Book Like This to a global audience
Angus & Julia Stone built their shared recording career starting with the 2007 album A Book Like This, followed in 2010 by Down The Way, a release that raised their international profile to a new level. The Australian Recording Industry Association ARIA states that Down The Way reached number one on the Australian albums chart in 2010, while the song Big Jet Plane became one of the duo's best-known works. At the 2010 ARIA Awards, Down The Way won Album of the Year and Best Adult Alternative Album, Big Jet Plane was named Single of the Year, and Angus & Julia Stone also received the Producer of the Year award. In a more recent overview of their career, ARIA stated that the duo have won a total of six ARIA awards.
That period was followed by the albums Angus & Julia Stone in 2014, Snow in 2017 and Cape Forestier in 2024, alongside other projects and solo work by both musicians. In 2024, ARIA reported that all of their studio albums up to that point had entered the top ten of the Australian chart, with two reaching number one. Such continuity in the domestic market was accompanied by growth in their international audience, which can also be seen in the scale of their tours. Promotional materials for the Karaoke Bar World Tour cite more than three billion streams of the duo's catalogue, a figure Frontier Touring uses as an indicator of their global reach. Although streaming figures alone do not describe an artist's longevity, in this case they coincide with almost two decades of regular touring and a presence in major concert markets across Europe, North America and Australia.
The tour follows the international Cape Forestier cycle
The announced Australian series follows a period in which Angus & Julia Stone were once again performing intensively outside Australia. The Living Room Sessions tour in 2024 accompanied the album Cape Forestier and included performances in major concert halls such as London's Royal Albert Hall, Paris's Olympia and New York's Town Hall. Official and venue announcements from that period show that the concerts were conceived as a cross-section of new material and older songs, with an emphasis on harmonies and alternating between more intimate and fuller arrangements. The Sydney Opera House now describes the Karaoke Bar World Tour as the duo's first national headline tour since the 2024 Living Room Sessions cycle. This gives the Australian series a dual role: a return to domestic stages and the beginning of the next international chapter.
Unlike a tour that begins after a longer recording hiatus, the Karaoke Bar World Tour starts almost immediately after the release of the new album. Just over five months will pass between the record's release in early September 2026 and the first Australian concert in mid-February 2027. This leaves room for the new songs to become established through singles and digital releases, but also for concert arrangements to develop before the start of the world cycle. Organisers are currently emphasising that Australian audiences will be among the first to hear the new repertoire live as part of this tour. The further international schedule has not been detailed in the Australian announcement, so the scope of the next stages of the world tour will depend on subsequent announcements.
Ticket sales begin in September 2026
According to the published sales information, the Frontier Touring members' pre-sale is scheduled for September 9, 2026, at 11 a.m. local time, while general sale begins on September 11 at 12 p.m. local time. Some ticketing platforms also have additional artist pre-sale periods, which means the exact start of sales may differ depending on the city and ticket type. Organisers therefore direct buyers to the official channels of the promoter, venues and authorised ticketing services. In Melbourne, both performances at Forum Melbourne are designated as events for adults, meaning 18+, while Adelaide, Brisbane and Sydney are designated as all-ages events. Perth also permits entry for those under 18, but with a valid ticket and accompaniment by a parent or legal guardian.
Such age and sales differences are important because the tour takes place in venues with different licences and entry rules. Available information also shows that sales for individual cities are handled through different authorised services, including Ticketek, Ticketmaster and direct sales by the Sydney Opera House. Prices are not listed uniformly in all announcements and may vary by location, category and fees, so they cannot reliably be reduced to a single amount for the entire tour. International visitors should additionally check local entry conditions, age restrictions and venue rules before purchasing. Since this is a newly announced tour, organisers may later publish operational details such as entry times, support acts or additional dates.
Australia as the beginning of a new world cycle
The decision to begin the Karaoke Bar World Tour in Australia is logical both in view of the duo's origins and their long-term connection with audiences there. Nevertheless, the announcement is framed more broadly than a traditional national tour: the name World Tour clearly signals that the six Australian concerts represent the opening stage of a larger international cycle. At this point, the most firmly confirmed information concerns Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney and Perth, while the full continuation of the world schedule has not yet been presented in the same announcement. For audiences outside Australia, this means that further announcements can reasonably be expected, but dates and cities cannot be stated before official confirmation. For the Australian concerts, however, the calendar is already precise enough to confirm the project's ambition: six performances, five cities, two outdoor concerts and the beginning of the tour only a few months after the album's release.
For Angus & Julia Stone, the new tour comes at a moment when their catalogue simultaneously carries the weight of long-standing favourites and the need to present fresh material. Big Jet Plane, Chateau, Paper Aeroplane and other older songs remain an important part of the duo's identity, but Karaoke Bar gets the opportunity to reveal its full character only on stage. That is precisely why the first evenings of 2027 will be an important indicator of how the new album will fit into a concert repertoire developed over almost two decades. Particular attention will be paid to the two nights in Melbourne, the outdoor performance in Sydney and the finale at Kings Park in Perth, because each of those locations offers a different setting for the same musical material. After March 5, attention will naturally shift to the next international dates of the Karaoke Bar World Tour when they are officially announced.
Sources:
- Angus & Julia Stone - official Karaoke Bar album page and track list (link)
- Sydney Opera House - official announcement of the February 28, 2027 concert on the Forecourt and programme information (link)
- ARIA - overview of the duo's career, chart results and number of ARIA awards won (link)
- ARIA Awards - official list of 2010 award winners, including Down The Way and Big Jet Plane (link)
- Rolling Stone Australia/New Zealand - tour announcement, concert schedule and Julia Stone's statement about the Sydney performance (link)
- The Music - confirmation of dates, entry rules, pre-sales and general sale, and information about the album's creation between Greece, France and Australia (link)
- Ticketek Australia - information about artist pre-sale and Frontier Members pre-sale for the Adelaide concert (link)
- Herald Sun / The Mercury - context of the album's creation, work across multiple locations and the story connected with the song The Cherry Farm (link)
- Music Feeds - announcement of the world tour and the figure of more than three billion streams of the duo's catalogue (link)