Simple Minds Announce Huge Dublin Show With Gary Numan
By Simple Minds
With Special Guest: Gary Numan
3arena Dublin Date Confirmed
Tickets on Sale Friday 11 September
Mon 17th May 2027 | 3Arena, Dublin
Presale Thu 10th Sep 9:30 am | Doors 6:30 PM
Tickets From €78.25 (Inc Booking Fee & Venue Facility Fee) From Ticketmaster.Ie
Bookings Subject To 12.5% Service Charge Per Ticket (Max €10.50)
Simple Minds are set to make a triumphant return to Ireland, bringing five decades of iconic music to Dublin’s 3Arena on 17 May 2027. Joining the Scottish rock legends for this very special headline show will be synth-pop pioneer Gary Numan, making for an unmissable night of classic and cutting-edge sounds.
They also announced details of their brand-new studio album, Sacrosanct, to be released on 29 January 2027 on BMG.
In the four years since 2022’s top 5 album Direction Of The Heart, the band have been busier than ever, releasing a critically acclaimed career spanning documentary, publishing a joint memoir (Uncut magazine and Rough Trade’s ‘Books of The Year’), and delivering live shows across the world, that have seen them continually lauded as one of the greatest bands of their generation.
Last year alone they played in front of over 1.5m people and some of their biggest audiences since 1985, on their hugely successful Global Tour. It was during this remarkable period, on a high from touring, they began to craft and record their new album.
Their North American leg in 2025, inspired Kerr and Burchill to draw on their art rock and new wave roots, after witnessing fans in cities they’d never played, react ecstatically to early songs such as ‘Sons and Fascination’. This atmosphere prevails throughout Sacrosanct, and its eight brilliantly crafted songs that have both a simplicity and an ethereal directness to them.
The album finds the lifelong collaborators on supremely confident form, on one of their most vital albums in decades; one which recaptures the magic and majesty at the very heart of Simple Minds.
‘Beginner Boys’, the first song to be released from the album, is inspired by Kerr watching his twin grandsons grow up and thinking about what it means to raise a good man today — “how strength, tenderness, courage, and gentleness might still belong together, even when the wider culture around them can send mixed signals. It’s less a statement than a question I hope they’ll spend their lives answering for themselves.” Featuring an outstanding, restrained vocal from Kerr, and the unmistakeable shimmering guitar of Burchill, the song belies an infectious euphoria.
The Magazine-inspired opening song, ‘Elysium’, named after the paradise of Greek myth, reserved for those who lived well or fought hard – the natural counterpoint to the album’s ‘King Of The Underworld’, inspired by the figure Mephistopheles and about whoever, or whatever, rules over our appetites – to the life-affirming ‘Jerusalem’ (State of Mind), influenced by William Blake’s dream of a Jerusalem that was less a city, and much more a longing for a better world.
‘Our Secrets Are The Same’ directly explores the lifelong bond between Kerr and Burchill, a song about a remarkable friendship; two eight-year-olds, who met on a Glasgow street, and are still finishing each other’s sentences fifty-odd years on. The most ‘pop’ moment on the album arrives in the form of ‘Songs’, a celebration of the power of songs to lift you on good days, and pull you out of depression on harder ones when little else can.
Sacrosanct’s two closing songs, ‘Alive In This Moment’ and ‘The Next Right Thing’, deal with nostalgia from differing perspectives. The former, with a trademark, uplifting Burchillian guitar intro, is about resisting the urge to reach back and, instead, to remain present, while the latter’s elegiac beauty focuses on the passing of time and the loss of those we love.
Regarding the choice of album title, Kerr said: “We called the album Sacrosanct because after a lifetime of doing this — nearly fifty years of writing songs together — it’s stopped feeling like a career and started feeling like something closer to faith. Calling the record Sacrosanct isn’t an exaggeration. It’s just honest.”
Sacrosanct is an artistic triumph and the third, alongside Walk Between Worlds and Direction of the Heart, in an emphatic trilogy.
“Making records and performing live is as much part of our lives now as when we started out. We feel grateful to those who support new music from Simple Minds and look forward to seeing you all on our upcoming world tour.” Jim Kerr