Disturbed are officially heading back to Australia and New Zealand in 2027, and they’re bringing the whole of The Sickness with them. Seven arena shows, two sets every night, and the band’s first headline tour of the region in more than a decade.
Well, there it is. After Live Nation Australia asked whether we were “down with The Sickness” in a not-so-subtle teaser on Monday, the Chicago metal heavyweights have confirmed a proper Australia and New Zealand run for April and May 2027.
And this isn’t just an excuse to drag out the old hits for 90 minutes. Each show will be split into two full sets with an intermission: first, 2000’s The Sickness played front to back; then, a second set drawn from the rest of Disturbed’s career. For anyone who grew up with that record rattling their bedroom walls, it’s a pretty compelling proposition.
Seven shows across Australia and New Zealand
The tour opens at Auckland’s Spark Arena on 22 April and Christchurch’s Wolfbrook Arena on 24 April, then crosses the Tasman for Brisbane on 28 April, Sydney on 1 May, Adelaide on 3 May, Melbourne on 5 May and Perth on 9 May. That’s seven headline arena shows across two countries, wrapping up in Western Australia.
Importantly, this is Disturbed’s first headline run through Australia and New Zealand in over ten years. That’s a different thing from a festival appearance: Australian fans saw them at Knotfest in 2024, but this time Disturbed get the whole night, and a setlist built around a very specific chapter of their history.
Disturbed 2027 Australia and New Zealand tour
- Thursday 22 April 2027: Spark Arena — Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland, NZ
- Saturday 24 April 2027: Wolfbrook Arena — Ōtautahi/Christchurch, NZ
- Wednesday 28 April 2027: Brisbane Entertainment Centre — Brisbane, QLD
- Saturday 1 May 2027: Afterpay Arena — Sydney, NSW
- Monday 3 May 2027: Adelaide Entertainment Centre — Adelaide, SA
- Wednesday 5 May 2027: Rod Laver Arena — Melbourne, VIC
- Sunday 9 May 2027: RAC Arena — Perth, WA
The updated tour announcement confirms all seven dates. The tour runs from 22 April to 9 May 2027, with five Australian stops after the two New Zealand shows.
Tickets and presale details
The artist presale begins Wednesday 28 October at 12pm local time. The Live Nation presale follows on Thursday 29 October at 12pm local time, with the allocation available until midday Friday or until exhausted. General tickets go on sale Friday 30 October at 1pm local time.
For tickets and presale registration, head to Disturbed’s tour page or Live Nation Australia. New Zealand fans can use Live Nation New Zealand.
Why The Sickness still matters
Released in 2000, The Sickness arrived right as heavy music was bursting out of the underground and into the mainstream. Down With the Sickness, Stupify and Voices helped turn the album into a fixture of the era — whether you loved the theatrical aggression or thought it was all a bit much. A quarter-century later, people are still shouting that opening vocal hook at each other.
The record has been certified five-times platinum in the US and spent 106 weeks on the Billboard 200. Live Nation says the band’s 25th-anniversary Sickness tour drew more than half a million fans across North America, the UK and Europe. The second set gives Disturbed room to reach into songs like Stricken, Inside the Fire and their towering cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s The Sound of Silence — a track whose success introduced the band to listeners well beyond metal. Specific greatest-hits songs haven’t been announced, so don’t mistake that wish list for a confirmed setlist.
BLUNT called it at 94%
On Monday, before a single date was official, BLUNT examined Live Nation’s teaser and put an Australian-show announcement at 94% on the Blunt Meter. The prediction was deliberately specific: that Australian live performances would be announced, not that we already knew the cities, venues or exact format.
Now we do. The result is confirmed, and the original story remains published as a dated record of what we knew — and what we didn’t — before the announcement landed. The accompanying Facebook post had already attracted around 2,100 likes and 800 comments as fans debated what was coming. No retrospective score-changing required.
A return that comes with controversy
There is another story running alongside these dates, and it’s not something that belongs in the small print. Disturbed’s last European tour was met with public protests, a cancelled Brussels concert and a wave of debate over frontman David Draiman’s support for Israel and the Israeli military.
In 2024, Draiman shared an image of himself signing an Israeli military artillery shell near the Gaza border with the words “Fuck Hamas”. The image drew intense criticism from pro-Palestinian campaigners; Draiman has defended the act and rejected suggestions that signing the shell meant endorsing the deaths of civilians. He has publicly distinguished Hamas from Palestinian civilians in explaining his position.
The controversy was visible at Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne’s Back to the Beginning farewell concert in July 2025, where some audience members booed Draiman during his guest appearance. Draiman subsequently disputed reports portraying the reaction as universal.
By October 2025, that controversy had followed Disturbed across Europe. Authorities cancelled the band’s 15 October show at Forest National in Brussels after a police assessment warned of a risk to public order; it wasn’t a cancellation announced by the band. Campaigners also gathered outside Glasgow’s OVO Hydro on 28 October to protest the concert and Draiman’s stance.
Disturbed responded to the Brussels cancellation by saying music should bring people together and that fans of all beliefs are welcome at their shows. Draiman, meanwhile, continued to defend his decision to sign the shell, and publicly criticised some protesters. BLUNT reported on the protests, the band’s response and the subsequent touring hiatus when Draiman said they needed a long break after the European run.
Now they’re coming back to arenas in Australia and New Zealand. That’s major news for fans, but the political fallout hasn’t simply vanished because a fresh set of tour dates has appeared. There have been no confirmed announcements of Australian protests in the information available to BLUNT at the time of writing, so whether the controversy plays out locally remains an open question.
We put the question to readers on Facebook: are you ready for Disturbed’s 2027 Australian tour, or does David Draiman signing an Israeli military shell change how you feel about the band? The response has been anything but quiet. Join the debate in the Facebook post below and tell us where you stand.
Onstage, at least, the plan is clear: The Sickness in full and a second set of hits. Offstage, this tour arrives carrying considerably more history than the announcement poster can capture.
Joel King
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