Placebo book ten Latin American shows to mark thirty years as a band

Placebo are taking their thirtieth anniversary to Latin America, with a run through Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia and Mexico across February and March 2027. Consequence reports the announcement, describing it as a ten-date run, although the itinerary published alongside it lists nine shows.

The premise is a catalogue one. Brian Molko and Stefan Olsdal will revisit material from the band's first two albums, 1996's Placebo and 1998's Without You I'm Nothing, which means songs that have not been in the set regularly for years rather than a straight greatest hits run.

Olsdal tied the choice to what those records did for the band at the time. "1996, when the album came out, that's when we started to play shows outside of the UK," he said in a video accompanying the announcement, adding that until then it had been pubs and small venues on the Camden circuit, and that the band never thought of themselves as British.

That is a pointed thing to say ahead of a South American tour, and it is also accurate. Placebo built an audience in continental Europe and Latin America earlier and more durably than they did at home, and a thirtieth anniversary spent in Sao Paulo, Lima and Bogota rather than in London follows where the audience actually is.

The published dates run 20 February in Sao Paulo, 23 February in Brasilia, 26 February in Curitiba and 28 February in Porto Alegre, then 3 March in Buenos Aires, 6 March in Santiago, 9 March in Lima, 11 March in Bogota and 16 March in Guadalajara.

Indie Hoy has the Argentine detail. The Buenos Aires show is at Estadio Malvinas Argentinas, tickets go through All Access, and a Visa Macro presale opens on Wednesday 23 September at midday with up to nine interest-free instalments, followed by general sale from midday on Thursday 24. It will be the band's first Argentine date in three years, after a March 2024 show at Luna Park on the Never Let Me Go tour that itself ended a decade's absence, and where the set mixed recent material with The Bitter End, Taste in Men and Infra-red.

Indie Hoy expects Every You Every Me, Pure Morning, The Bitter End and Special K in the 2027 set, alongside material tied to Placebo RE, the band's most recent project. Argentina's 2027 calendar is filling fast with acts making the same calculation, including Foo Fighters in February and Alexisonfire playing Crisis in full in Buenos Aires. Our tour guide tracks the dates, and the rock hub has the rest.