The Smashing Pumpkins announce The Rats In A Cage Tour dedicated to the album Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness
The Smashing Pumpkins have announced a major North American tour titled The Rats In A Cage Tour, with which they will mark the thirtieth anniversary of the album Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness in the autumn of 2026. According to the band's announcement and confirmed concert listings, the tour begins on September 30, 2026, in Columbus, Ohio, and ends on November 14, 2026, with a performance at the Darker Waves festival in Huntington Beach, California. It is an extensive series of concerts in the United States and Canada, with performances in major arenas, including TD Garden in Boston, Barclays Center in Brooklyn, United Center in Chicago, Bell Centre in Montreal, Rogers Arena in Vancouver and Kia Forum in Inglewood. The tour title refers to one of the best-known lines from the song Bullet With Butterfly Wings, a single that marked the mid-nineties and remained one of the recognizable points in the band's body of work.
According to the announcement published by Pitchfork, each concert on the tour will be conceived as a performance in two separate sets. One part of the program will be dedicated to the album Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness and its anniversary, while the other will include a broader cross-section of almost four decades of the band's career, including well-known songs, more rarely performed compositions and material described in the announcements as the darker part of their catalogue. Such a format suggests that the tour will not be merely a nostalgic performance of the greatest hits, but an attempt to place one of alternative rock's most ambitious releases into the broader context of the work of Billy Corgan, James Iha, Jimmy Chamberlin and the current live line-up.
A tour through major halls in the United States and Canada
The published schedule shows that The Smashing Pumpkins are targeting the largest North American markets with the tour, but also several cities that are important to the concert infrastructure of alternative and arena rock. After the opening in Columbus, the band will perform in Boston, Baltimore, Brooklyn, Pittsburgh, Hamilton and Montreal, followed by concerts in Madison, Saint Paul and Chicago. In the second half of October, the schedule moves toward the south and west of the United States, with performances in Charlotte, Jacksonville, Tampa, Indianapolis, Nashville, Oklahoma City, Austin, Denver, Salt Lake City and Las Vegas. The final part of the tour includes Portland, Calgary, Vancouver, Seattle, San Jose, Phoenix and the Los Angeles area, before the festival performance in Huntington Beach.
According to Live Nation data, some of the concerts at the time of the announcement have a presale marked, while for certain dates sales and festival tickets are handled through separate channels. The announcements also mention the possibility of special VIP packages, which should include additional content related to the band, including a preshow, access to special areas and limited memorabilia. Details on ticket prices differ by market and venue, so they need to be checked with the authorized ticketing systems for each individual concert. According to currently available information, European dates for this specific tour have not been announced.
- September 30, 2026 – Columbus, Ohio – Schottenstein Center
- October 2, 2026 – Boston, Massachusetts – TD Garden
- October 3, 2026 – Baltimore, Maryland – CFG Bank Arena
- October 4, 2026 – Brooklyn, New York – Barclays Center
- October 6, 2026 – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – PPG Paints Arena
- October 7, 2026 – Hamilton, Ontario – TD Coliseum
- October 9, 2026 – Montreal, Quebec – Bell Centre
- October 11, 2026 – Madison, Wisconsin – Kohl Center
- October 13, 2026 – Saint Paul, Minnesota – Grand Casino Arena
- October 14, 2026 – Chicago, Illinois – United Center
- October 16, 2026 – Charlotte, North Carolina – Spectrum Center
- October 17, 2026 – Jacksonville, Florida – VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena
- October 18, 2026 – Tampa, Florida – Benchmark International Arena
- October 20, 2026 – Indianapolis, Indiana – Gainbridge Fieldhouse
- October 22, 2026 – Nashville, Tennessee – The Truth
- October 24, 2026 – Oklahoma City, Oklahoma – Paycom Center
- October 25, 2026 – Austin, Texas – Moody Center
- October 27, 2026 – Denver, Colorado – Ball Arena
- October 29, 2026 – Salt Lake City, Utah – Delta Center
- October 30, 2026 – Las Vegas, Nevada – MGM Grand Garden Arena
- November 1, 2026 – Portland, Oregon – Moda Center
- November 3, 2026 – Calgary, Alberta – Scotiabank Saddledome
- November 5, 2026 – Vancouver, British Columbia – Rogers Arena
- November 6, 2026 – Seattle, Washington – Climate Pledge Arena
- November 8, 2026 – San Jose, California – SAP Center
- November 11, 2026 – Phoenix, Arizona – Mortgage Matchup Center
- November 12, 2026 – Inglewood, California – Kia Forum
- November 14, 2026 – Huntington Beach, California – Darker Waves
Why Mellon Collie remains the central point of the band's body of work
The album Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness was released on October 24, 1995, and has remained the most extensive, most ambitious and commercially most important release by The Smashing Pumpkins. According to data from EMI's record-industry announcement, the album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart and produced some of the band's best-known songs, including Bullet With Butterfly Wings, 1979 and Tonight, Tonight. The same source states that the RIAA awarded the album diamond certification for sales of 10 million discs and digital equivalents per disc, or five million copies of the double album. Universal Music Canada, in its announcement of the anniversary reissue, also states that the album brought seven Grammy Award nominations, including nominations in the Album of the Year and Record of the Year categories.
The importance of that release does not stem only from sales results. Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness was a double album in a period when alternative rock had already moved from the club and independent environment into the mainstream, but still retained a strong sense of artistic risk. The record combined loud guitar anthems, orchestral arrangements, intimate ballads and psychedelic departures, by which the Chicago band expanded the boundaries of what was then considered a commercially viable rock album. In that sense, the anniversary tour is not only a reminder of one successful title from the nineties, but also of a period in which major rock bands could still build extensive, conceptually developed albums for a mass audience.
Two sets as an attempt to connect the past and the present
The announced two-set format is important because The Smashing Pumpkins have a catalogue that is difficult to reduce to a few radio singles. The band attracted attention in the early nineties with the albums Gish and Siamese Dream, and then with Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness reached its greatest commercial range. After that came releases such as Adore and Machina/The Machines of God, line-up changes, breaks, returns and later albums that tried to align Corgan's authorial aesthetic with a different recording and concert environment. For that reason, the announcement of sets with deep cuts from the catalogue may be especially important to an audience that does not connect the band only with its best-known singles.
According to Pitchfork, the tour comes after the album Aghori Mhori Mei, released in 2024, the band's first album after the departure of longtime guitarist Jeff Schroeder. The same source states that instead of hiring a well-known collaborator or session musician, the band launched a public call for guitarists, after which Kiki Wong joined the line-up. This is an important detail in the context of the new tour because the major anniversary concerts will at the same time represent a test of the band's current live dynamics. The Smashing Pumpkins are thus entering the anniversary cycle with material from their best-known phase, but also with a line-up that reflects more recent changes in their work.
An anniversary accompanied by reissues and a new reading of the catalogue
The thirtieth anniversary of the album has not been marked only by the announcement of an arena tour. Universal Music Canada announced in October 2025 that Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness would receive a special anniversary reissue, including additional live material from 1996. According to that announcement, the reissue brings eighty minutes of previously unreleased recordings from the Infinite Sadness tour, and new versions on digital platforms, CD editions and a limited vinyl box set have also been announced. The same press release states that the package includes new notes by Billy Corgan, which further positions the album as an archival and authorial project, and not only as a commercial anniversary.
Such an approach shows that the band and the record company are trying to connect several levels of legacy. On the one hand, it is an album that has long been part of the canon of alternative rock and the popular culture of the nineties. On the other hand, the release of live material from 1996 offers insight into the band at a moment when it was at one of the peaks of its concert power, with the original line-up and a repertoire that was then immediately new. In combination with the new tour, the anniversary reissue creates a broader framework in which Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness is presented again as living material, and not only as an object of retrospective.
The tour title and the symbolism of the song Bullet With Butterfly Wings
The title The Rats In A Cage Tour is almost directly connected with the chorus of the song Bullet With Butterfly Wings, one of the key singles from the album Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness. In the context of the band's career, that song has a special place because it combines an aggressive guitar sound, Corgan's recognizable vocal performance and lyrics that became part of wider rock iconography. EMI's 2012 press release lists it among the album's main songs, alongside 1979 and Tonight, Tonight, which clearly shows how important that single has remained for the public perception of the group. The choice of such a title for the tour is therefore not merely a marketing sign, but a way to connect the entire project immediately with the emotional and cultural charge of the album.
At the same time, the tour title recalls the tension that was always present in the work of The Smashing Pumpkins: between grandeur and anxiety, stadium sound and a feeling of isolation, romantic melody and a distorted wall of guitars. It was precisely that tension that marked Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness, an album that in its best-known moments was extremely accessible, but as a whole remained branched, long and unevenly tempered in an intentionally wide range. For that reason, the announcement of two sets may open space for a different concert dramaturgy, in which the singles will be placed alongside less obvious songs and deeper catalogues from different phases of the band.
What the announcement means for the current phase of The Smashing Pumpkins
The Smashing Pumpkins today function as a band that simultaneously preserves its best-known period and continues to produce new material. Pitchfork reported in 2024 that Aghori Mhori Mei followed the extensive album Atum and contains ten songs, which shows that the band has not remained only at the status of a concert legacy act. At the same time, the return to Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness is an understandable move at a moment when the music industry increasingly relies on anniversary tours, deluxe reissues and archival material. With The Smashing Pumpkins, that model carries additional weight because it concerns an album that in real time was both a commercial event and a risky authorial undertaking.
The tour will probably attract multiple generations of audiences: those who followed the album at the time of its release, those who discovered the band through later compilations and streaming, and younger listeners interested in the major phase of nineties alternative rock. Still, according to the available information, it is not yet clear whether the concept of The Rats In A Cage Tour will expand to other markets after the North American part. For now, dates in the United States and Canada have been confirmed, and the band's official channels and ticketing systems remain the main source for any possible additions to the schedule. Thus the announced tour for now remains clearly defined as an autumn North American project, but also as one of the most important anniversary rock events of 2026.
Sources:
- The Smashing Pumpkins – the band's official website with the announcement of The Rats In A Cage Tour and current concert information (link)
- Live Nation – list of confirmed concerts and venues for The Smashing Pumpkins: The Rats In A Cage Tour 2026. (link)
- Pitchfork – news about the tour announcement, the two-set format and the band's current line-up (link)
- PR Newswire / EMI Music – data on the diamond certification of the album Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness and its debut on the Billboard 200 (link)
- Universal Music Canada – announcement of the 30th anniversary reissue of the album Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness and additional live material from 1996 (link)
- Pitchfork – news about the album Aghori Mhori Mei and the context of changes in the band's line-up (link)