Hottest Tickets: Your Guide To The Biggest Shows in May 2026
Friday, 01 May 2026
Written by Stereoboard
Hello! Welcome to Stereoboard’s new monthly gig guide, where we’ll give you the lowdown on all things loud and live over the next few weeks, from massive names kicking off long-awaited tours to hidden gems, ticket deals and the artists who are being searched for non-stop on our ever-changing Hottest 100 Tickets list, which ranks events listed on our site right now, based on click stats over the preceding 24 hours.
Who are May’s headline acts?
Thanks to a rare blast of sunshine in recent weeks May feels more than ever like the gateway to the summer, with stadium extravaganzas creeping onto the calendar as the football season wraps up and the first flushes of festival season visible on the horizon. In the former camp are Take That, whose eagerly-anticipated The Circus Live Tour will begin with two shows at St. Mary’s in Southampton at the end of the month.
Gary Barlow, Mark Owen and Howard Donald’s plans run through to July, rekindling one of their greatest post-reunion triumphs by re-staging The Circus, a run that remains one of the biggest in their history while leaving a similarly large footprint on UK music as a whole. The Script and Belinda Carlisle will open, teeing up the possibility of a cross-generational pop party.
At arena level, meanwhile, there’s some serious star wattage in play. Fresh from the blockbuster success of her new record ‘This Music May Contain Hope.’, Raye will play two nights at London’s O2 Arena in mid-May. Soon after, Dermot Kennedy is set to scale fresh heights with his tour supporting his new LP ‘The Weight of the Woods’. It kicks off on May 29 in Glasgow.
On the following day, meanwhile, Madison Beer’s The Locket Tour arrives at the O2 Arena in London, bringing with it the skipping electro-pop and rich atmospherics of her recently-unveiled record of the same name.
Who’s ruling the Hottest 100 Tickets list?
You’ll find Raye present and correct in the upper echelons of the list but, as recent months have invariably shown, it’s Olivia Dean’s game right now. Taking a break from hoovering up Grammys and Brits, Dean’s tour behind ‘The Art of Loving’ has been winding its way across the UK and Europe of late, with a May show upcoming at Sunderland’s Herrington Country Park before her summer plans truly get underway.
Also hot right now is Capital FM’s Summertime Ball at Wembley Stadium and Olivia Rodrigo’s mammoth Unraveled Tour, which will hit the UK next spring for eight dates at the O2 Arena in London between April 5 and 19, celebrating her bound-to-be-massive new record ‘you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love’. Tickets are on general sale for this one at 12pm on May 7. For a regular heads up on this kind of info, keep your eyes peeled every Thursday for our Top Tickets This Week rundown and sign up for our weekly newsletter, which will drop the latest tour news directly into your inbox once a week.
Who’s on the rise?
There has been a lot of buzz around Angine de Poitrine of late, and it’s easy to see why. Everyone loves rubbernecking at something weird, right? The Québécois duo are a mess of masks, polka dots and mind-rewiring math-rock played on double-neck guitar-bass contraptions through, like, 657 pedals. Dave Grohl said that when he first heard their music “it absolutely blew my fucking mind.” And he’s not alone in that assessment.
Angine De Poitrine have been lurking with intent on the Hottest 100 list for weeks, with their May shows in Leeds, London and Bristol creating a real buzz about seeing them in a small room before it’s too late. They have already upgraded their autumn UK tour plans, with gigs at the Prospect Building in Bristol, the O2 Academy in Glasgow, Vicar Street in Dublin and the O2 Academy Leeds leading up to a couple of nights at the Troxy in London during October.
Also creating a stir is Skye Newman, whose November UK tour is blowing up on the Hottest 100. With additional dates being added due to pre-sale demand, The Survival Tour is poised to rubber-stamp the south London singer-songwriter as someone heading to the very summit of pop’s mountain.
Having already sold out one tour this year, and with her new EP ‘SE9 Part 2’ poised for a May 29 release, the autumn run will orbit three shows at the O2 Academy Brixton in London, with a couple of nights also planned at Manchester’s O2 Victoria Warehouse alongside gigs in Bristol, Wolverhampton, Edinburgh, Newcastle and Brighton.
Deals, steals and highlight reels
Before we sign off for this month, we wanted to let you know that here at Stereoboard we’ve always got one eye on a steal. That’s why you’ll always find our Ticket Deals page stocked with shows going at face value or below, from A$AP Rocky to Zach Bryan.
NOTE FROM THE EDITOR
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