Heavy metal pillars Iron Maiden have announced one of the biggest tours of 2026, Confirming the North American leg oft the Run for Your Lives World Tour, Iron Maiden will extend their 50th anniversary celebration revisiting the first nine albums of their legendary career. Unveiling a brand new stage production, the stadium run will curate essentials from 1980's eponymous debut through 1992's Fear of the Dark. 

As if that weren't enough, the icons of heavy metal have also recruited a legendary supporting roster adding both Megadeth and Anthrax to the mammoth bill. The announcement also confirms Iron Maiden's headlining set at Louder Than Live Festival in Louisville, KY. set for next September. 

Steve Harris shared, “We are greatly looking forward to bringing this Run For Your Lives Tour to North America and hope the fans enjoy seeing the show and hearing the set list as much as we do playing it. It’s an added bonus to have a few of our good friends on the tour with us. Megadeth are playing all the shows and it’s an honour to have them join us on their last ever tour. We also have Anthrax with us on the bigger shows, we had a great time with them when they came out with us on Ed Force One around the world in 2016. We’re delighted to have both bands with us for this tour and know our fans will enjoy seeing them.”

Bruce Dickinson added, “This whole tour has been such great fun. I really enjoy belting out all these great old songs, and the whole band are loving playing them too! We’ve got all the big ones from that early period including Hallowed, Run To The Hills, Trooper, Number Of The Beast, Killers, Powerslave, 2 Minutes… and some of them we haven’t played in the US for over 20 years!! Plus there’s some real epics including my particular favourite ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ and Seventh Son… We are doing them all and more. I mean, who wouldn’t for a 50th birthday party!”

The band's longtime manager Rod Smallwood also added some insight to the significance of the tour, explaining how this run marks of the biggest dates in the region for the band and reminding fans that the team is requessting that fans ditch their phones and enjoy the spectacle in the flesh, rather than through their screens. 

“For a tour celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Iron Maiden the scale and incredible visual aspects of this show deserve larger venues than the arenas we have generally played in the past. We particularly chose this time of year to go bigger outdoors but to give us darkness when we go on stage so you will see the best of the production. Fans certainly won’t be disappointed in the show or the 50th anniversary set list that is for sure!”

We particularly look forward to playing the huge shows in Montréal and the Alamodome in San Antonio, two of the biggest shows we have ever played in North America plus, of course, Louder Than Life – America’s biggest Rock Festival! 

Finally it was really special on our European dates this year to see that the vast majority of our fans appreciated and respected our request to severely limit their use of phones at our concerts, ideally just keeping it in their pockets the whole time, especially in those standing areas in front of the stage. Our fans’ understanding and cooperation made a colossal difference to the atmosphere of every show and increased the enjoyment enormously for the band and fans alike.

So for all our North American shows we are once again requesting that fans keep their phones in their pockets and enjoy the show ‘in the moment’, rather than raise their phone in the air trying to film sections and thus inconveniencing those around them and annoying the band. So if a so-called fan near you thinks they are special and filming what they selfishly want please just ask them, very politely of course, to put their phone somewhere the sun doesn’t shine!”

Iron Maiden fan club tickets for the Run for Your Lives North American dates will be available starting October 28th. Fans can access the pre-sale - HERE

General on-sale for the North American leg of the Run for Your Lives World Tour begins October 31st. See the complete list of dates below. Get tickets - HERE