Red noses at the ready as Take That prepare to park their clown cars in a stadium near you when they bring back The Circus tour in 2026. It was the band’s favourite show and they tell the Daily Star why they’re ready to squirt water in the eyes of fans again. Honk!
ROLL up, roll up boys and girls, welcome to the greatest Take That show on Earth….all over again.
The Circus, the band’s legendary 2009 tour, is returning next summer for a run of huge stadium shows across the UK and Ireland. It’s the spectacle that transformed Gary Barlow, Howard Donald and Mark Owen into acrobats and clowns, riding a giant 25 foot elephant through stadiums. “The Circus is back,” gushed Gary Barlow at the launch. “It’s worth noting that the elephant got a bigger applause than we did.”
Take That have always sold bucket loads of concert tickets but 2009’s The Circus tour was next level. It shattered Michael Jackson’s record as the fastest selling in UK shifting 600,000 tickets in under five hours.
Despite going down in Take That folklore many fans didn’t get to see the gig. Mark explained: “What’s funny is I’ve seen a lot of people says I didn’t see it. So it’s incredible to have played to that many people, but most people say, ‘oh, that’s the one I missed’.”
Howard agreed: “A lot of those people have children now as well, so I think they’ll be very excited to bring the kids along to the circus.”
The lads plan to deliver the same spectacle with a similar setlist, but with a few surprises. “Mainly it will be the same show. We talked about this for a long time because it’s a lot of people’s favourite show,” said Mark. “It was a real high point for us as a band and we want to be really respectful of the show that we did. But as we get into the rehearsals I think we’re all open minded enough to say, ‘we could add this here’. We are in the studio recording at the moment, so we might be able to put some new songs in there.”
For Gary the connection with audience was extra special on this tour. “What often happens with concerts is that we have a different feeling than the audience,” recalled Gaz. “This show we were as excited as the audience every night. I mean this show is bigger than our band. It’s its own thing and we are literally three spokes in the wheel when we go on there is a stage full of colour and excitement and it just takes you off into another world for a couple of hours.”
The Circus pushed the lads into new acrobatic territory and 17 years on they’ll have to get back into shape. In fact Howard has already started back on his unicycle. “I’ve been taking my unicycle everywhere with me,” said Howard. “When we did the circus back then you had to be on it every day, it had to feel like part of your body to get down the catwalk come rain or shine.”
Being among trapeze artists and jugglers never gets old for Gaz: “One of my best memories from last time -I walked up the stairs to rehearsal and someone got thrown across the room. Someone was juggling with fire. Howard was on his unicycle with a coffee, I was thinking ‘what the hell are we doing here?” That’s what the circus is like.”
Back in 2009 tour support came The Script and a little known artist called Lady Gaga. Mark said: “The Script are coming back and Belinda Carlisle. We say that the Script and Lady Gaga went on to success after doing the circus.” Howard joked: “Lady Gaga’s doing our warm up!”
Revisiting The Circus isn’t about nostalgia for Take That, they see it as a brave new world.
Gaz explained: “We never want to feel like we’re going backwards. We always want to be going forwards. And I think that big attraction for this, was that we’ve never actually repeated a tour at all before and we actually can’t think of anyone who has.
“It feels like we’re doing something sort of brand new as well. And even though most of the show will be exactly the same, we actually already viewed the show and we think we can get it even better.”
Get tickets from Friday next week.
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