The Future Past World Tour was a concert tour by English heavy metal band Iron Maiden, in support of their seventeenth studio album Senjutsu, which is part of their tour's theme, along with their 1986 album Somewhere in Time.[1] Following 2005's Eddie Rips Up the World Tour, 2008–2009's Somewhere Back in Time World Tour and the Maiden England World Tour in 2012–2014, this is the band's fourth concert tour to focus on a particular part of their history. The tour featured "Alexander the Great", which was performed for the first time.[2][3][4] The tour was set to continue into 2024.[5][6] The tour started on 28 May 2023 in Ljubljana and concluded on 7 December 2024 in Sao Paulo.[7] It was the final concert tour to feature Nicko McBrain before his retirement from touring, and the band announced it shortly before the concert at São Paulo, Brazil, which is the final date of the tour.[8]
All thirty-three shows of the European leg were commercial and artistic successes with more than 750,000 fans in attendance.[9][10][11] Mostly indoor events attracted record numbers of spectators, and according to critics, the band showed its best form in many years.[12] The 2023 leg of the tour ended with the group's performance at the Wacken Open Air festival, which they headlined for the fourth time in their career. Drummer Nicko McBrain participated in the tour after suffering a stroke in January 2023.[13] On 6 October, the band performed at Power Trip, which was attended by 100,000 people and became their largest performance as a festival headliner in the United States.[14] In mid-October, shows planned for 2024 were announced. Already at the pre-sale stage, a second concert at the Estadio Nacional in Santiago was added. In a short period, over 100,000 tickets were sold for both concerts combined, setting another record in the history of the band.[15] The first concert in Bogota in 13 years at the El Campin stadium was sold out at the pre-sale stage in 20 minutes. The band broke all previous records of ticket sales for Colombian concerts by a foreign artist, set by icons such as The Rolling Stones, Madonna, The Weekend, Ed Sheeran, and Coldplay.[16]
The first of two concerts at the Allianz Parque stadium in São Paulo was sold out in two minutes, the band set a sales record for a group representing heavy rock music.[17] In Argentina, over 50,000 tickets for a stadium concert in Buenos Aires were sold in three hours. it's happened for the first time in the band’s career to sell out a show in Argentina so quickly.[18] 44 shows scheduled for 2024 attracted more than one million people across Asia, Oceania and both Americas. The band performed 81 shows for almost two million fans throughout the tour.[19]
The visual setting of the stage referred to the cyberpunk style associated with the classic sci-fi movie "Blade Runner". The overall design brought to mind a dystopian city of the future, topped with ramps of lights arranged in the shape of a pyramid. For the first time, the band used additional screens placed symmetrically deep inside the stage to present visualizations and music videos, deepening the three-dimensional effect.[20]
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