Rise Against and Dropkick Murphys are heading back to Australia and New Zealand later this year for a run of arena and outdoor shows that feels engineered for hoarse voices, flying beer cups and the kind of crowd chants that hit like impact tremors.
The tour begins in Christchurch at Wolfbrook Arena on November 21 before moving through Auckland’s Spark Arena and crossing into Australia for dates in Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney and Perth. One of the standout stops arrives on December 1 when the bands take over the steps of the Sydney Opera House Forecourt, a venue that tends to transform punk shows into something strangely cinematic once the harbour wind starts cutting through the amplifiers.
Both bands will also appear at Meltdown in Gosford alongside The Living End and Jebediah, locking together a line-up that reads like a survival guide to loud guitar music across multiple generations.
Few modern punk bands have maintained the consistency of Rise Against. Emerging from Chicago at the turn of the millennium, the quartet built their reputation on balancing melodic hardcore urgency with political anxiety, songs that could soundtrack both a circle pit and a collapsing news cycle. Across albums like Siren Song of the Counter Culture, The Sufferer & the Witness and Appeal to Reason, the band turned alienation, unrest and resistance into something communal rather than isolating.
That thread continues on their latest release Ricochet, described by the band as one of their most immediate and high-stakes records yet. Even after more than two decades, Rise Against still sound wired directly into the tension of the present moment rather than operating as a nostalgia act lazily replaying old slogans.
Dropkick Murphys, meanwhile, remain one of punk’s great communal live bands: part pub singalong, part street protest, part hockey arena release valve. Backseat Mafia covered the band on their last Australian tour, in 2024 where their show felt like a temporary city built around sweat, solidarity and shouted choruses. Whether tearing through Celtic punk staples or material from recent album For The People, the Boston group continue to carry themselves like underdogs even while headlining massive rooms worldwide.
For Australian crowds, this pairing makes immediate sense. Rise Against bring the clenched urgency. Dropkick Murphys bring the catharsis. Together, they arrive with the kind of line-up that feels designed for shouting every word back at the stage until your throat gives out halfway through the encore.
For complete tour & ticket information, visit: livenation.com.au and livenation.co.nz
