Take That's Circus tour: a look back at the 2026 run

Take That's Circus Live tour has come and gone for the summer, and if you missed it, you're not alone in feeling a bit gutted. The 2026 run was a reboot of their iconic 2009 show, and it lived up to the name, running from 29 May to 4 July with 17 shows across the UK and Ireland and more than 736,000 tickets sold. It was built around their upcoming tenth studio album, still to be named and due late in the year, so the setlist leaned on the hits everyone knows.

For anyone who caught it, the setlist was a proper greatest-hits run. It opened with The Adventures of a Lonely Balloon as an intro, then rolled through Greatest Day, Hello, Could It Be Magic, Pray, A Million Love Songs, Back for Good, The Garden, Shine, Up All Night, Babe, You're a Superstar, Love Ain't Here Anymore, Nobody Else, The Circus, What Is Love, a Clown Medley of Do What U Like, Promises, It Only Takes a Minute and Take That & Party, Said It All, Never Forget, Patience and Relight My Fire with Zoe Birkett on sax. The encore brought Hold Up a Light and Rule the World. It's the kind of set that rewards anyone who's followed them since the beginning.

The tour itself was a bit of a victory lap. It kicked off at St Mary's Stadium in Southampton on 29 and 30 May with The Script and Belinda Carlisle opening, then moved through Coventry, Sunderland, Glasgow, Cardiff, Manchester and London before closing in Dublin on 4 July with OneRepublic and Delta Goodrem. The London Stadium stop was the one with the most history attached, the same place the band performed at the closing ceremony of the 2012 Olympics. The whole run was a nod to the original 2009 tour, which set the record as the fastest-selling tour in UK history at the time, with over 600,000 tickets gone in under five hours and more than a million fans across the country. That version came with fire-breathers, stilt-walkers, clowns, acrobats, tap dancers and a 30-foot mechanical elephant, so the bar was set high.

It's worth remembering who we're talking about here. Take That formed in Manchester back in 1989, and these days it's Gary Barlow, Howard Donald and Mark Owen carrying the torch, with Jason Orange having left in 2014 and Robbie Williams long gone since 1995. Barlow is the lead vocalist and main composer, with 14 or 15 number-one singles to his name and more than 50 million records sold, and he was appointed an OBE in 2012. Donald is the main dancer and backing vocalist, and Owen rounds out the trio. Together they've picked up eight Brit Awards, including Best British Group and Best British Live Act, and in 2011 they broke their own record for the fastest-selling tour in UK history with Progress Live. So, while the circus has packed up for now, the track record suggests they won't be quiet for long. If you missed this one, keep an eye out for whatever comes after the new album.