Hans Zimmer Takes the Next Level Across 30 Arenas

Hans Zimmer will take a 19-piece band through 30 North American arenas in 2027, a run of the Next Level show that already sold out 50 nights in Europe.

General tickets went on sale September 25. The routing opens February 17, 2027, at PeoplesBank Arena in Hartford, Connecticut, and ends April 11 at Moda Center in Portland, Oregon.

Europe Already Bought the Proof

Semmel Concerts and RCI Global, the firms that built this production with Zimmer, announced the North American leg on September 17, 2026. They are not importing a new idea. They are moving a show that, by April 2, 2026, had finished 50 sold-out European dates in 17 countries and played to 600,000 people.

The same announcement placed that European run among the top 10 tours worldwide in the first half of 2026. A 2023 Zimmer live circuit in Europe had already drawn more than 400,000 people. Next Level was the follow-up, not the first test of whether film scores could fill hockey barns.

THE EUROPEAN RUN IN NUMBERS

• The count: 50 sold-out shows in 17 countries, 600,000 tickets, closed April 1, 2026, in Lisbon.
• The convoy: 150 personnel, 20 trucks, and a stage 17 meters wide, 15 meters deep, and 5 meters high, with three lifts.
• The power: 920 speakers pushing 955,400 watts, per the promoter’s close-out figures.
• The night: a 3-hour, 15-minute set that runs without a local symphony in the pit.

Sample box-office reports released with that close-out show why arenas on this side of the Atlantic are being booked at all.

THREE SOLD-OUT NIGHTS

Dieter Semmelmann, chief executive of Semmel Concerts, said the brief was to push the live concept further than the earlier tours, then build a production that could live in major arenas rather than concert halls. North America gets that machine, not a scaled-down copy.

A 10-Cabinet Synth Replaced the Orchestra

The 2024 North American tour still traveled with a full orchestra around an 18-piece core band. Next Level does not. Hailey Featherstone, who designs the lighting with her father John at Lightswitch, put the swap in one line: the camp lost the orchestra and gained a giant 10-cabinet synthesiser.

We lost the orchestra and gained a giant 10-cabinet synthesiser. Hans also changed his approach to the arrangements and the introduction of new instruments has changed it in a foundationally different way.

Hailey Featherstone, co-lighting designer, Lightswitch

That instrument is GIORGIO III, built with Pierre Jean Tardiveau of SynTesla as a touring version of the world’s largest modular synthesiser. Ten cabinets, patched as a playable wall. The rig auto-switches between European and American voltage, because the same stack is meant to work in Prague, Lisbon, Beijing, and then Hartford.

Jim Baggott, the production manager who has been with the live camp since 2014, described the onstage company as the band, a 16-piece Kenyan choir, and that synth as the visual and musical centre. John Featherstone said the last tour treated the music as the story and the lights like a rock show; this one flipped the jobs, because the arrangements got more electronic and more percussive.

Zimmer’s own brief matches that. In the North American announcement he said he wants fans to feel as if they are at a rave party or riding a roller coaster, and that every night is a new voyage of discovery. The status quo, he said, is the thing you have to leave behind.

The official trailer for the production is the cleanest look at that rewrite before the trucks reach Connecticut.

PRODUCTION ON THE ROAD

• The band: Zimmer plus a 19-piece ensemble, not a pickup orchestra.
• The choir: Nairobi Chamber Chorus, 16 voices, used as a touring section rather than a local add-on.
• The horns: a French horn sextet, with aerial work from Nina Treiber.
• The runtime: 3 hours and 15 minutes, mixed on a DiGiCo Quantum 852 from more than 300 input channels.

Art direction sits with Derek McLane. Audio design sits with Colin Pink. The producer is Steven Kofsky, who founded RCI Global with Zimmer in Santa Monica. AEG Presents is on the North American side with Semmel Concerts.

The 19 Players Who Carry the Scores

The press line is a 19-piece band. The credit sheet matches it: 19 named players on the band sheet, not counting Zimmer, who plays keyboards, guitar, and the occasional banjo.

Several of those names are the original voices on the cues people are paying to hear. Lisa Gerrard sings the Gladiator material she helped define. Lebo M carries The Lion King. Loire Cotler is the Dune call. Guthrie Govan and Nile Marr take the guitar chairs. Holly Madge and Aicha Djidjelli share the drums, often on a rising platform. Mariko Muranaka’s cello and Molly Rogers’s violin cover the solo string writing that used to need a pit.

VOICES FROM THE ORIGINAL SCORES

• Lisa Gerrard: Gladiator vocals, on stage rather than on a playback stem.
• Lebo M: The Lion King, the part of the catalog that first won Zimmer an Oscar.
• Loire Cotler: Dune, including “Paul’s Dream,” the cue that now opens a live door into Arrakis.
• Guthrie Govan: the rock guitar that turns The Dark Knight and Pirates suites into arena music.
• Nile Marr: second guitar, on a tour that exists because Johnny Marr once told Zimmer to stop hiding.

The rest of the 19 fill synth, bass, percussion, flute, and extra violins. Juan Garcia-Herreros, known as Snow Owl, plays bass guitar. Andy Pask plays bass. Steven Doar covers synth and percussion and is listed as music director on recent Next Level programs. Veronika Vitazkova is the multi-flutist. Kevin Schroeder sits at another synthesizer. Eliane Correa plays keyboards and accordion.

Anyone who sat in those rooms in 2024 already knows the catalog works at arena volume. The open question for 2027 is how this tighter, synth-led rewrite hits the same buildings without a local orchestra padding the midrange.

Thirty Arenas From Hartford to Portland

The 30-date North American itinerary is a standard NHL and NBA circuit. Four of the 30 nights are in Canada (Ottawa, Quebec City, Hamilton, Vancouver). The other 26 are in the United States. There is no Madison Square Garden date this time; the New York stop is UBS Arena in Belmont Park on February 19.

American Express card members had a presale on September 23 at 10 a.m. local time. The artist presale ran September 24. The public sale opened September 25, and arena accounts from Hartford to Sacramento posted that tickets were live that Friday.

THE 2027 NORTH AMERICAN DATES

The set draws from the Dark Knight trilogy, Inception, Interstellar, Gladiator, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Lion King, and both Dune films, with room for No Time to Die, Dunkirk, Man of Steel, The Last Samurai, Wonder Woman, Kung Fu Panda, 12 Years a Slave, and Top Gun: Maverick. That is the catalog as listed in the tour announcement, not a locked cue sheet. Night-to-night order still moves.

Stage Fright Built This Circuit

Zimmer has five Grammy Awards, including Dune: Part Two, two Academy Awards (The Lion King, Dune), and three Golden Globes. The Prudential Center announcement puts his film, television, and game work above 500 projects and above $30 billion at the worldwide box office. None of that required him to look at a crowd.

He said it did, eventually. Before the first Hans Zimmer Revealed dates in 2016, Pharrell Williams and Johnny Marr told him stage fright was not an excuse and that he could not hide behind a screen for the rest of his life. He recalled them saying there comes a point where you have to look people in the eye and play for them live. The first European run opened at Wembley Arena on April 6, 2016, with a company of about 70 musicians, Marr among them.

THE LIVE ARC

1. April 6, 2016: Opens Hans Zimmer Revealed at Wembley Arena after years of refusing the stage.
2. April 2017: Plays Coachella, still calling himself a composer rather than a performer, then takes the first U.S. hall dates.
3. September 6, 2024: Opens a 17-city North American tour in Duluth, Georgia, with the 18-piece band and a full orchestra.
4. September 12, 2024: Sells out Madison Square Garden on his 67th birthday, his first New York show since Radio City in 2017.
5. October 12, 2025: Next Level Europe begins the arena cycle that drops the orchestra.
6. April 1, 2026: Closes that European run in Lisbon after 50 sold-out shows.
7. September 17, 2026: Books the same production into 30 North American arenas for February through April 2027.

Two German dates on that European map never happened. Festhalle Frankfurt on November 3, 2025, and SAP Arena in Mannheim on November 6, 2025, were cancelled, and the official tour site said the calendar was too tight to replace them. Refunds went through Eventim. The rest of the route held.

A separate licensed show, The World of Hans Zimmer, still sends orchestras out with film clips and a conductor, and Zimmer’s own FAQ treats that brand as a different official product. Next Level is the one with Zimmer on stage, no local symphony, and the synth in the middle of the floor.

The Same Production Is in China This Fall

Before any of those 2027 buildings go dark for load-in, the Next Level trucks are in Asia and Australia. Official dates include Beijing on September 23 and 24, 2026, Hangzhou on September 26 and 27, then Chengdu, Guangzhou, Singapore, Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, and Sydney, with later stands in Doha and Abu Dhabi in November.

Melbourne’s first night at Rod Laver Arena on October 24 is already marked sold out on the tour site, with a second night listed the next evening. That is the same production, the same 19-piece band, heading into the same class of room Hartford will see in February.

The 2027 routing is the North American chapter of a live format Zimmer has been rewriting since 2016, from a 70-person Revealed company, through an orchestra-backed 2024 U.S. tour, to this synth-led arena show. Hartford is where that version of the show finally starts its American loop.