Blabbermouth reports that when speaking with Music Radar, Iron Maiden bassist Steve Harris mentioned the band’s upcoming 50th anniversary tour, which will take place in 2025 and 2026. The Run For Your Lives world trek will see Harris and his bandmates perform classic songs off their first nine studio albums, from their 1980 debut Iron Maiden to 1992’s Fear Of The Dark, which marked singer Bruce Dickinson’s last album before he exited the group and later returned in 1999.

“It’s amazing that this band’s been going for 50 years,” 68-year-old Harris told Music Radar. “When you really think about it, it’s insane. How many songs we’ve done, how many albums, how many tours… it’s outrageous. And it’s fantastic to see so many young people in the audience now. A couple of shows that we did recently, we had youngsters, real youngsters, like nine or ten years old, and then some others like teens or early twenties. So we’re still generating new fans all the time. And I think that’s because we put on a good, entertaining show. We’re still playing really well. And for all those young people turning up, I think a lot of them – dare I say it – I don’t think they’ve seen anything like it. We’re seeing all these young people in the front row, and they must think we’re ancient now. Well, we are, I suppose. You know, when I was 17, I thought 25 was old.”

Iron Maiden’s longtime drummer Nicko McBrain played his last-ever gig with the band earlier this month in São Paulo, Brazil. The 72-year-old British musician, whose real name is Michael Henry McBrain, announced his retirement on Saturday, December 7, in a statement on Iron Maiden’s website and social media pages. He also said that night’s concert at Allianz Parque in São Paulo would mark his final show with the iconic heavy metal act.

Despite the fact he is stepping away from touring, McBrain said that he will remain closely connected with Iron Maiden and continue to be involved in “a variety of projects” with the band, while also focusing on personal ventures and his existing businesses.

On December 8, Iron Maiden announced that Simon Dawson would be taking over as the band’s new touring drummer. Dawson is a former session drummer and Harris’s longtime bandmate in British Lion.

Back in 2019, Harris told SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk that there has been no talk of Iron Maiden retiring as a unit anytime soon, despite the fact that all members of the band are in their late 60s.

“We all feel that if we feel we’re not cutting it anymore, then we’ll discuss it and that will probably be the end of it,” he explained. “But at the moment, we don’t feel like that. We feel that we definitely still are pulling our weight, so to speak. We’re just doing well. So far so good. I don’t want to tempt fate, but we are doing good.”

In 2022, Bruce Dickinson told Full Metal Jackie’s nationally syndicated radio show about Iron Maiden’s longevity as well as the group’s multigenerational appeal. “We’re not planning to retire at all, really. I think we’ll probably drop dead onstage. I can think of worse places to drop dead. But no, we’re not planning on retiring. We’re all still firing away [with] loads of energy and loads of enthusiasm. 

“With respect to our fans, we’ve got generations of fans now,” he continued. “Even at [my] spoken-word shows, I can crack jokes about the age of the audience only because half the audience is, like, my age, but the other half of the audience is often way, way younger. So it’s brilliant. We’ve got this whole intergenerational thing going. And, obviously, at the Maiden shows, it’s even bigger, the emphasis on that. And huge numbers of women. It’s fantastic. ‘Cause it always used to be cliché, back when I was starting in the early ‘80s, that heavy metal was just, like, misogynist, male-dominated stuff… But no, it’s not true. There’s loads and loads of heavy metal fans who are girls.”

The São Paulo performance marked the final show of Iron Maiden’s The Future Past world tour, which began in May 2023.

The Run For Your Lives world tour is scheduled to launch in May 2025 in Hungary. Dates announced so far go through July 2025 in Germany.

When the Run For Your Lives trek was first announced, Dickinson said the 50th anniversary tour will give “fans a once-in-a-lifetime live experience. This is a tour that’s gonna put a smile on your face and a cheer in your throat. If you’ve seen us before, then get ready to take that experience to a whole new level. If you’ve never seen us before, then what the hell have you been waiting for? Now’s your chance to find out what you’ve been missing! Iron Maiden’s definitely gonna get ya!”

The band stated they would “cover classics and fan favorites from the first nine albums, from Iron Maiden to Fear Of The Dark, many of which we haven’t played in years and many we will likely never play again in the future. We have already been hard at work for months putting together an even more spectacular and elaborate new show which will bring the songs to life more than we have ever been able to do before.” Information about the upcoming tour can be found on the band’s website.

Photo Credit: Boston Lynn Schulz