After performing his smash-hit show Horizons to nearly half a million people across the world, Professor Brian Cox has announced a return with a new world tour named Emergence. The physicist, musician, and professor at the University of Manchester, is set to perform another globe-spanning set of live shows, including one date at The O2 in London next year.
Brian Cox has appeared in many landmark science programmes for BBC radio and television over the last 15 years, from the Peabody Award-winning Wonders of the Solar System to the worldwide hit series The Planets. He will take his new show around the world next year, including UK cities such as Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester, Cardiff, Liverpool, Birmingham, and London. Brian Cox will perform at The O2 on October 23, 2026 – and if you can’t wait til then, he will be performing some warm-up gigs this year, including dates in Lancaster and Watford.
Professor Brian Cox said: “I’ve loved creating Emergence – it’s the most ambitious live show I’ve ever written. I’ve been very lucky to collaborate with a wonderful group of scientists, musicians, filmmakers and graphic artists to bring cosmology, biology, philosophy and history to the largest and most advanced LED screens available, with the best sound and lights I could find. I hope the show is an all-encompassing experience, and I hope it leaves everyone, whether they love science or music or history, or simply contemplating the beauty of Nature, with something new to think about.”
What is the Brian Cox Emergence tour about?
The Emergence tour by Brian Cox is a celebration of the intricacy of the Universe and an exploration of the laws of nature that sculpted it. From the largest structures in the known Universe – the rivers and flows of galaxies that trace the cosmic web – to Earth’s interlinked ecosystems and the structure of the human brain – from black holes to snowflakes – we observe a world of dazzling complexity underpinned by magnificent simplicity.
How did a quarter of a million-year-old species of great apes on one small planet amongst trillions orbiting around a middle-aged star in an average galaxy figure all this out, guided by curiosity, mathematics and an aesthetic sense of symmetry and beauty? And what might we become if we can hold onto the ideas of the enlightenment so successfully developed and deployed by Kepler and his contemporaries and successors – ideas that have allowed us to begin to read the story of the Universe and carried our spacecraft to the edge of the solar system and outwards to the stars.
Brian Cox 2026 UK and Ireland tour dates
October 7 – Playhouse, Edinburgh
October 8 – Playhouse, Edinburgh
October 9 – Co-op Live, Manchester
October 10 – First Direct Arena, Leeds
October 11 – Vaillant Live, Derby
October 15 – Utilita Arena, Sheffield
October 16 – M&S Bank Arena, Liverpool
October 17 – Utilita Arena, Newcastle
October 18 – OVO Hydro, Glasgow
October 21 – Centre, Brighton
October 22 – Centre, Brighton
October 23 – The O2, London
October 24 – Pavillions, Plymouth
October 29 – Motorpoint Arena, Nottingham
October 30 – Utilita Arena, Birmingham
October 31 – Connexin Live, Hull
November 4 – The Centaur, Cheltenham
November 5 – Arena utility, Cardiff
November 6 – Arena utility, Cardiff
November 7 – BIC, Bournemouth
November 8 – BIC, Bournemouth
November 11 – Swansea Arena, Swansea
November 13 – SSE Arena, Belfast
November 14 – 3Arena, Dublin
How to get tickets to see Brian Cox in London
Those looking to get tickets to see Brina Cox live at London’s O2 can sign up for the artist pre-sale, which begins on October 1 at 10am. Alternatively, the Ticketmaster pre-sale will begin on October 2 at 10am. General ticket sales start on October 3 at 10am. Find out more information on the tour and tickets here.
