Marillion announce A Tour Before It's Christmas 2023

(Image credit: Anne-Marie Forker)

Is it too early to be thinking about the winter holidays? Asking for a Marillion! They've just announced the return of their festive shows in 2023 with A Tour Before It's Christmas. The British band will be performing at venues in Europe and England across 10 dates and say they "will be playing an assortment of our favourite tunes, once again."

The mini-tour culminates in a performance at London's prestigious Roundhouse, which is playfully going under the name of A Racket In The Roundhouse. Tickets for this show, and many others, go on sale at 10am local time on June 16, with pre-sales available the day before. For more information, visit the band's official website.

Marillion have a long tradition of performing festival shows and at Christmas 2022 even treated their subscribers to the limited-edition free live double album, Yule Be Glad, which contained a recording of their Light At The End of The Tunnel show from the Hammersmith Eventim Apollo in November 2021.

Meanwhile, the band are wrapping up the last of their Marillion Weekend dates with a show at the Berlin Tempodrom in Germany on June 23. H Natural solo shows from vocalist Steve Hogarth are scheduled to take place over the summer and into the autumn, and guitarist Steve Rothery will be back on the road in September and early October.

A Tour Before It's Christmas 2023

Nov 12 : Strasbourg La Laiterie, FR
Nov 13: Paris Trianon, FR
Nov 15: Utrecht TivoliVredenburg, NL
Nov 16: Utrecht TivoliVredenburg, NL
Nov 18: Leipzig Haus Auensee, GER
Nov 19: Koln Palladium, GER
Nov 21: Antwerp De Roma, BE
Nov 22: Luxembourg Philharmonie, LU
Nov 24: Wolverhampton The Halls, UK
Nov 26: London The Roundhouse, UK

Contributing to Prog since the very first issue, writer and broadcaster Natasha Scharf was the magazine’s News Editor before she took up her current role of Deputy Editor, and has interviewed some of the best-known acts in the progressive music world from ELP, Yes and Marillion to Nightwish, Dream Theater and TesseracT. Starting young, she set up her first music fanzine in the late 80s and became a regular contributor to local newspapers and magazines over the next decade. The 00s would see her running the dark music magazine, Meltdown, as well as contributing to Metal Hammer, Classic Rock, Terrorizer and Artrocker. Author of music subculture books The Art Of Gothic and Worldwide Gothic, she’s since written album sleeve notes for Cherry Red, and also co-wrote Tarja Turunen’s memoirs, Singing In My Blood. Beyond the written word, Natasha has spent several decades as a club DJ, spinning tunes at aftershow parties for Metallica, Motörhead and Nine Inch Nails. She’s currently the only member of the Prog team to have appeared on the magazine’s cover.