Andrea Bocelli's 2027 UK tour: dates and venues

If you have been waiting for a reason to venture out of Portsmouth for a night at the arena, Andrea Bocelli has given you one. The Italian tenor is bringing his Romanza 30th Anniversary World Tour to the UK in 2027, a run of four autumn dates that marks three decades since the album that made him a household name.

The UK leg is compact, with all four shows starting at 8pm. It opens on Wednesday 29 September at the Utilita Arena in Birmingham, continues at The O2 in London on Friday 1 October, heads to Manchester's Co-op Live on Tuesday 5 October, and closes at the OVO Hydro in Glasgow on Saturday 9 October. For anyone weighing up the travel, the London date at The O2 is the most accessible from the south coast, while the Manchester stop is at Co-op Live, the largest live entertainment arena in the UK, with a maximum capacity of 23,500.

Tickets go on general sale at 10am on Friday 2 October, so there is plenty of time to plan. The Birmingham and Manchester dates come with VIP seat and ticket-plus-hotel options, which are worth considering if you are travelling from Portsmouth and want to make a proper weekend of it rather than a long day trip. The OVO Hydro in Glasgow, designed by Foster + Partners and opened in September 2013, holds up to 14,300 people and stages more than 140 events a year, so it is a well-oiled venue for a big night.

It is worth knowing who you are going to see. Born in Lajatico, Tuscany, in 1958, Bocelli became blind at the age of 12 following a cerebral haemorrhage, and he has since become one of the best-selling artists in history, with more than 90 million albums sold worldwide and over 25 billion streams. His 1997 pop album Romanza, the very one this tour celebrates, has moved nearly 20 million units and was the best-selling album by an Italian artist in Canada and several European and Latin American countries. His classical record Sacred Arias, at 5 million units, is the best-selling classical album by a solo artist in history, and his first single, Time to Say Goodbye, recorded with Sarah Brightman, topped charts across Europe, staying at number one in Germany for 14 consecutive weeks and selling more than 3 million copies.

The accolades back up the numbers: a Golden Globe, seven Classical BRITs, seven World Music Awards, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which he received in 2010. In 2012, he took home the Classic BRIT Award for Best International Artist and performed Amazing Grace at the ceremony. Across seventeen studio albums, four compilations, twenty-two singles, four collaborative records, eleven complete opera recordings, three live albums and nine video releases, he has worked across pop, classical and Latin, with a Christmas album in the mix as well.

This tour is not his only UK appearance that year, either. Earlier in the spring, he is set to play his first Welsh headline concert at Cardiff's Principality Stadium on Saturday 8 May, also at 8pm, so the 2027 run is really two separate visits. Whether you are a lifelong fan or have just never seen him live, a night of Romanza is hard to argue with, and with the dates spread across the autumn, there is room to pick the one that suits you best.