ENTER SHIKARI are one of those bands that perfectly exemplify how pop culture operates in the 21st century: restless, hybrid, politically charged - and yet profoundly emotional. Formed in St Albans, England, in 2003, Rou Reynolds, Rory Clewlow, Chris Batten, and Rob Rolfe began early on not to smooth over the fault lines between Post-Hardcore, Electronics, Punk, and Pop, but to deliberately lay them bare. The band themselves call this tension “Trancecore” - a term that seems as programmatic as it is defiant.With their debut ‘Take To The Skies’, ENTER SHIKARI surprisingly landed in the upper echelons of the British charts in 2007. It marked the beginning of a career that consistently defied predictability. Album after album, the band shifted their aesthetic coordinates: from the furious intensity on ‘Common Dreads’ to the vibrant escalation of ‘A Flash Flood Of Colour’, to the stylistic re-imagining on ‘The Mindsweep’ and the vulnerable, almost intimate ‘The Spark’. By ‘Nothing Is True & Everything Is Possible’, it was clear that ENTER SHIKARI view their music as a sounding board for societal crises - and as a counter-narrative to the assertion that there is ‘no alternative’.
Frontman Rou Reynolds continues to develop this stance beyond music. In his books, he dissects political systems, ideologies, and the fragile balance of a globalised world. The band’s songs are distillations of these thoughts: loud, overdriven, but never random. In 2023, Enter Shikari reached number one in the British charts for the first time with ‘A Kiss For The Whole World’. A late, almost incidental signal of triumph for a band that never saw success as an end in itself.
However, in the latter third of their history, one thing stands out: ENTER SHIKARI are, first and foremost, a live band. With around 3,000 gigs worldwide, arena tours, headlining festivals, and a legendary performance at Wembley Arena, captured on the live album ‘Wembley. London. 17th February 2024’. Their shows are physical experiences, collective catharses, complete works of art comprising light, noise, and intimacy. Reynolds speaks of empowerment, of the energy that only arises when bodies react in the same space. The fact that the band donated a portion of their ticket proceeds to support small clubs is entirely consistent with their ethos: live music as social infrastructure.
This restlessness was also evident in 2025, with their largest German headline concert to date in Cologne and performances between California and Reading. ENTER SHIKARI remain on the road - in thought as well as in the tour bus. And so it is already clear: in autumn 2026, the band will return to Germany for five concerts. ENTER SHIKARI will be joined by two acts who, in their own distinct ways, continue the themes of boundary-pushing and emotional intensity:
HOLDING ABSENCE, whose melodic Post-Hardcore channels pain and hope into anthemic forms, and THE CALLOUS DAOBOYS, currently one of the most radical and unpredictable voices in the Mathcore cosmos. This line-up sounds less like a classic support act hierarchy and more like a carefully curated artistic statement. Anyone wishing to understand why this music transcends mere genre, and why ENTER SHIKARI’s live concerts are simultaneously political, social, and physical spaces, ought to be there.
German Tour Dates
03 Nov 2026 Hamburg - Sporthalle
04 Nov 2026 Munich - Zenith
05 Nov 2026 Leipzig - Haus Auensee
06 Nov 2026 Düsseldorf - Mitsubishi Electric Halle
07 Nov 2026 Berlin - Columbiahalle
Tickets go on sale from Wednesday, 28th January, 11 AM, exclusively via Eventim. From Friday, 30th January, 11 AM, tickets will be available for €45.00 plus booking fees at all usual CTS pre-sale outlets, as well as via the hotline +49 (0)1806 - 570070 (€0.20/call incl. VAT from all German networks), on fkpscorpio.de and Eventim.
