2026.03.14 - Sydney, Australia (Night 1)

[LPLStaff]

NOW we're ready for the 5th show of the Australia and New Zealand run!

Unfortunately, Linkin Park had to cancel the last show in Adelaide, Australia because of an illness in the band, likely Emily being sick as we saw in Melbourne. If you recall on night 2, the band had to cut both "Stained" and "Heavy Is the Crown" (after 77 straight shows) from the setlist with Emily letting the crowd sing a good portion of some of the songs. Emily made up for it with her increased energy on-stage, and fans that went to both shows seem to have preferred the night 2 show even more than night 1!

 

So with an unfortunate cancelations in Adelaide, and the band arriving in Sydney already, it looks like the band will forge ahead with these shows. What remains to be determined is if they will have to cut or change any part of the show to accommodate, so we'll see. LP unfortunately won't be able to make it back to Adelaide, as the venue is booked after New Zealand and it costs a fortune to bring a small army + tour production +the band, etc 19 hours from LA... and they won't hit the region more than once per album. So we hope they can make it back to Adelaide next album and make it up for those fans. Lucky, the Bern 2025 canceled show was able to be rescheduled to a stadium show in Zurich for 2026, so that one is being made up. In a nice move for fans, LP opened the outside merch in Adelaide and sold souvenirs for fans for very discounted prices.

 

Sydney will be Linkin Park's 9th and 10th shows in the city. The very first tour, the US-to-Europe Tour in 2001, that they played Sydney on featured a show at the Enmore Theatre where the fans quite literally broke the floor of the venue. Here's Mike's comments on it:

"okay, so the australian shows have been banannas. i think it's safe to say a show has gone well when the kids leave behind them a BROKEN CLUB FLOOR. when everyone cleared out of the enmore theatre in sydney, there was a 20-foot circle where the floor had been smashed down about 18 lower than where it was supposed to be. the crowd was so out of hand that they broke the floor. and tonight in melbourne, we had the biggest turnout that we've had on a headlining show. we can't wait to see what happens in brisbane. --Mike"

 

This Sydney show may have been the first-ever Linkin Park show with an encore break, too, but we are not completely sure on the setlist for it. But starting your career in a city with breaking the venue floor is really something! The next show in Sydney came during Meteora and was on the Livid Festival at Moore Park. There's sadly no setlist from that show, but a guy that filmed the show and got caught, handing his tape over, somehow managed to grab the last two songs of that show.

 

Chester is a monster in this performance, check it out! The entire fall 2003 run in Australia and Asia for Linkin Park was quite great... as we know from the Tokyo Budokan shows that are pretty legendary in the community and of course the Seoul show on Meteora|20's box set.

 

 

LP's first show at the arena came in 2007, where they actually elevated right away to being able to perform two shows. The Sydney Entertainment Centre (later Acer Arena, and now Qudos Bank Arena) hosted Linkin Park twice in 2007

 

Night 1 in 2007, Mike said, "There's this controversy going on between Auckland and Sydney as it applies to Linkin Park, because they claimed the venue the band played where you fans broke the floor was in Auckland. It was in Sydney!" Chester said, "Sydney is home to the crazy motherfuckers that broke the venue!"  These two 2007 shows were very, very solid shows and came right after Chester broke his wrist in Melbourne on the tour.

 

In 2010, Linkin Park returned for their largest tour of Australia ever and played two more shows in Sydney. What's interesting is they sandwiched the Melbourne shows on the tour, with night 2 coming 4 days after night 1. Night 2 featured the second-ever LPU Summit, where fans were treated to an incredibly rare performance of "The Little Things Give You Away" acoustic by Mike and Chester.

 

 

The band performed a whopping nine shows in just Australia that tour which is quite impressive. Judging by the size of the crowds this tour, it seems they could even get back to that on the next album or so because of ticket sales.

 

On the LIVING THINGS Tour in 2013, Linkin Park played Soundwave across the country and of course added another headlining show at the arena as well... with Stone Sour. Lucky!

The Soundwave show is the one where Chester saw a fan down in the crowd and had the band stop "Points of Authority" so security could handle it and help the person out. Soundwave in 2013 featured absolutely wild crowds for the bands in general, and especially Linkin Park. That's what happens when Metallica plays after you - we love to see it.

 

We sure do wish 2013 had the DSPs (Digital Souvenir Packages) going because the Australia and New Zealand setlists rocked!

 

This will be Linkin Park's first visit to Sydney since 2013, quite a long time, and they're here for two shows. We are guaranteed to get some unique setlists and we'll see if "Given Up", one of the only rotation songs not played yet, pops up. We're sending our thoughts and wishes out to the band and hoping they can end the tour on a high note. Speaking of note... we are definitely remembering we need to head down to Australia next time Linkin Park tours there as the shows are always exceptional. This tour started with four amazing shows and with three left and a handful of the rarest From Zero World Tour rotation songs popping out, we definitely want to go down sometime.

 

Sydney for 2 shows and Auckland to close it - we're looking forward to it!

If you're going to the shows, have an amazing time and if you're able to check out the From Zero Nights or the pop-ups, then you're in great shape and making the rest of us jealous.

 

Here's the last setlist in Melbourne, for night 2, so we'll be taking the next step from that one when the band gets on stage in Sydney.

 

 

We're looking for you, "Unshatter" and "Let You Fade"! 

 

Bring on Sydney!

[xxHybridXeroxx]

So many historic / wild shows in Sydney, would be interesting to see if Mike mentions the floor breaking incident at this show perhaps? Regardless, I’m sure if they play (which hopefully it looks like they will with them being in Sydney) it will add to the history of insane LP shows there.

 

Furthermore if they play and drop some songs, that’s actually not a bad idea if Emily’s still not 100%… they have precedent from the 2008 Winter North American tour where they did that for a few shows while Chester recovered from being sick. Even with dropped songs those shows were still great. 

[LPLStaff]

Yeah people seem to prefer the shortened N2 Melbourne to the N1 full set, all because of the energy. If they need to tailor the set accordingly and not load it with songs harder for her voice then by all means do it since there are no breaks between these two shows. Night 2 immediately follows night 1 with no day off between. Probably good to avoid Given Up, APFMH, etc.

[xxHybridXeroxx]

28 minutes ago, LPLStaff said:

Yeah people seem to prefer the shortened N2 Melbourne to the N1 full set, all because of the energy. If they need to tailor the set accordingly and not load it with songs harder for her voice then by all means do it since there are no breaks between these two shows. Night 2 immediately follows night 1 with no day off between. Probably good to avoid Given Up, APFMH, etc.

I agree, I also prefer the n2 set, the show kinda gives me Long Beach 04 vibes. 

[troub1eboy]

I’m going to both the Sydney and Auckland shows

was at the pop up yesterday (got what I wanted so don’t need to worry about merch)

hoping for keys to the kingdom at one of the shows 

 

[xxHybridXeroxx]

From the clips I’ve seen so far on instagram; even though Emily is still a bit sick, it looks like she brought it again here. She still sounds good even being sick…