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Sparks for two Dublin shows this summer

Sparks for two Dublin shows this summer

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The alt-pop experimentalist brothers Ron and Russell Mael are coming back to Dublin.

Sparks play the National Stadium in Dublin on Tuesday 15th and Wednesday 16th July 2025.


It’s part of the band’s MAD! tour which kicks off in Japan this June. All dates around Europe and the UK are listed below.

Tickets go on general sale on Friday 4th April.

Fan Club presale starts Wednesday 2nd April via www.allsparks.com 

Your new favourite old band: Sparks

Sparks MAD! Tour


Sun. June 8 – Kyoto, JP @ ROHM Theatre

Tue. June 10 – Osaka, JP @ Zepp Namba

Thu. June 12 – Fri. June 13 – Tokyo, JP @ EX Theater

Wed. June 18 – Thu. June 19 – London, UK @ Eventim Apollo

Sat. June 21 – Sun. June 22 – Manchester, UK @ O2 Apollo

Tue. June 24 – Glasgow, UK @ Royal Concert Hall

Thu. June 26 – Haarlem, NL @ PHIL Haarlem

Sat. June 28 – Brussels, BE @ Cirque Royal

Mon. June 30 – Paris, FR @ La Salle Pleyel

Tue. July 1 – Cologne, DE @ Live Music Hall (venue upscale)

Thu. July 3 – Copenhagen, DK @ The Koncerthuset

Fri. July 4 – Stockholm, SE @ Grona Lund Tivoli

Sun. July 6 – Berlin, DE @ Uber Eats

Tue. July 8 – Milan, IT @ Teatro degli Arcimboldi

Sat. July 12 – Bilbao, ES @ Bilbao BBK

Tue. July 15 – Dublin, IE @ National Stadium

Wed. July 16 – Dublin, IE @ National Stadium

Fri. July 18 – Edinburgh, UK @ Edinburgh Playhouse

Sat. July 19 Wolverhampton, UK @ The Halls

About Sparks

Despite the efforts of Edgar Wright’s superb 2021 documentary The Sparks Brothers, which introduced the duo to a wider audience than ever before, the exact creative dynamic between the siblings remains inscrutable, as mysterious and unknowable as their private lives.

The one thing we know for certain is that Ron Mael is one of our most acutely perceptive observers of social mores. In a different discipline – dramaturg, cartoonist, novelist, cineaste, chronicler – he’d be a Moliere, a Hogarth, a Fitzgerald, an Altman, a Swift. He just happens to work within the medium of popular song. Another thing we know for certain is that Russell Mael has the asset of a talent to put those observations across in a uniquely arresting manner, captivating as a frontman and gifted with a countertenor voice of extraordinary range. The alchemy between Ron on keys and Russell on vocals – Two Hands, One Mouth, to invoke the name of one of their tours – is simply what they do. And they’ve rarely done it better than on MAD!, the band’s 28th studio album.

Most acts, by the time they’ve been making music together across seven different decades, would have slowed to a crawl, creakily playing the oldies on the heritage circuit and releasing nothing more modern than the occasional Greatest Hits collection.

Sparks aren’t most acts. If anything, their rate of productivity has sped up in recent years: since the millennium the duo have released eight new studio albums (including, in 2024, the original Sparks 2013 album recording of Annette), a radio opera (The Seduction Of Ingmar Bergman), a side-project (Franz Ferdinand collaboration FFS), a live album, a film musical (2021’s Annette, which won a ‘Best Director award for Leos Carax and the Best Original Score for the Maels at the César Awards), and several compilations (notably 2019’s career-spanning Past Tense), toured the world numerous times, as well as appearing in the aforementioned The Sparks Brothers. Their laurels remain resoundingly unrested-upon.


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