Sam Fender Tickets

The word “meteoric” suffers from frequent misuse. Either it’s mistakenly applied to bands who struggled for a decade or it’s wielded like a slur, as if near-immediate recognition is worth less than years of playing to five people in rural pubs.

Sam Fender’s rise can only be called meteoric and with no negative connotations. His musical grounding is in his DNA, his talent so blatant that it couldn’t go unnoticed. Born in North Shields in 1996, Fender was spotted as a teenager by Ben Howard’s manager and snapped up.

His 2017 debut single Play God demonstrated a gifted songwriter with more than introspection and young love on his mind and a grounding in the greats, from Bruce Springsteen to Jeff Buckley. Two more well-received singles and Fender was riding a wave of hype all the way to a coveted spot on the BBC’s Sound Of 2018 list (alongside Billie Eilish and Lewis Capaldi) and a deal with Polydor.

Sam Fender’s debut EP Dead Boys landed in 2018, gaining gushing reviews for its title track, which addressed suicide in young men. The following year, he won the Critics’ Choice Award at the BRITs without even having released an album yet.

Said album finally arrived later in 2019 in the shape of Hypersonic Missile. Again, reviews were ecstatic and Fender was invited to open for Neil Young and Bob Dylan at Hyde Park as well as a personal invitation from Elton John to play his AIDS Foundation Academy Awards Party. Elton John joined Fender onstage at the party for a rendition of Fender’s song Will We Talk? Sam Fender’s second album, Seventeen Going Under, followed in 2021.

In 2022, Sam Fender solidified himself as one of the most celebrated and successful British artists of his generation, pulling a huge crowd on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury ahead of his own 45,000 sell-out show at London’s Finsbury Park. He also picked up a slew of BRIT, NME, and Ivor Novello Awards, and a first nomination for the prestigious Mercury Prize for his second album.

That same year, Sam Fender announced his first stadium headline show at Newcastle's St. James' Park in the summer of 2023, following in the footsteps of Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan, and becomes the first Geordie musician to headline the stadium.

Fender announced his People Watching tour for December 2024. The seven-date run starts in Dublin at the 3Arena and ends at the Utilita Arena in Newcastle, also stopping at Leeds, Manchester, London, Birmingham and Glasgow – with £1 from every ticket sold for the UK dates to be donated to the Music Venue Trust in support of grassroots venues.