Enter Shikari are planning to go on hiatus at the end of 2027. According to the band, “this dormancy may eventually end with an eruption back into activity, or may end with extinction.”
“Many of you will have seen Rou’s video from last week. He mentions that we’ve been discussing our future as a band.
Now that some decisions have been made, and as we’ve always tried to be open with our audience, we feel it’s time to speak with one voice, tell you where we’re at, and make you a part of the next fourteen months’ journey.
As of December 31st 2027, Enter Shikari will fall dormant as a recording and performing entity.
This dormancy may eventually end with an eruption back into activity, or may end with extinction.
We have no idea which.
As everyone keeps reminding us, 2027 will be 20 years since the release of our debut album. We’ve been playing music together since we were 15, and friends longer still, but there’s no doubt this is a huge milestone.
For the past two decades, we’ve run amok in a cultural landscape that elevates easily-pigeonholed art, so being an ‘Enter Shikari’ hasn’t always been easy, professionally or personally, with obvious negative impact on one’s mental health when tasked with ‘coming up with the goods’.
But we do this because we love it. And we are lucky enough to have built an audience who understand that the less-trodden path is sometimes the more interesting journey.
However, it gets to the point where the often difficult terrain of that path starts to frazzle and drain the humble traveller. We are far from being the same kids who recorded that debut album, and as much as we love what we do, and still love being in each other’s company, as humans our priorities and capacities have changed.
Even before Rou’s recent illness, we’d had difficult conversations about what the next few years should hold. The pressures of the modern music industry, as well as our outside responsibilities and ambitions, had begun to urge change. To then see a friend in trouble made those conversations more pertinent.
While we don’t think we’re ‘splitting up’, we do not have a diary that extends beyond 2027.
We’re genuinely excited to make next year a celebration of what this band means to us. But after that it’ll be time to go away for a good while and see what being Rou, Rob, Rory and Chris, and not ‘Enter Shikari’, feels like.
Maybe we’ll be like Fugazi and just get together to rehearse for fun, without feeling the need to make anyone else listen to it? All we really know is, after two decades of being a ‘professional’ band, not having plans three years in advance is liberating.
But, first…
2026
Our heads are currently fully into the November tour and making that the absolute best it can be. If that ends up being the last time some people see us, we want to make it special.
As Rou mentioned, we’ve also been working on some bits of new music, which you should get to hear sooner rather than later, along with another thing we’ve just finished filming.
As it currently stands, we’ve got some mainland European and North American festivals in the diary for 2027, and we’ll soon announce a few U.S shows in Florida, Georgia & Tennessee for January.
If we were better at making the most of things and planning ahead, this whole message would be the precursor to announcing a ‘farewell’ world tour, but.. yeah.. there’s no world tour.
We’ll hopefully get to play some of our favourite places ‘one last time’ but we’re not sure how feasible that is yet.
We definitely want to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Take To The Skies – along with the 10th anniversary of The Spark, and the 15th of A Flash Flood Of Colour (you wait for one anniversary and three come along at once) – but what form any of that will take is still currently under discussion (though some of you will be interested to hear we’ve been busy revisiting the TTTS original multitracks. More on that soon).
So… it’s not the sort of statement we thought we’d be making if you’d asked us a year ago, but we felt it was time to let you know our headspace.
We really hope we’ll be seeing you over the next fourteen months or so, somehow. But, if not, all that remains to be said is thank you for your support, your sweat, your passion, your energy.
Solidarity,
Rob, Chris, Rory, Rou.”
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