RECAP: FOO FIGHTERS BRING 'TAKE COVER TOUR' TO VANCOUVER
Foo Fighters returned to Vancouver on September 20, 2026, for the first time in more than eight years, bringing the ‘Take Cover Tour’ to BC Place for the band’s 15th known completed Vancouver performance. Their Vancouver history now stretches back more than 31 years, beginning at the Commodore Ballroom in May 1995 and continuing through clubs, theatres, arenas, festivals and now their first known standalone headline concert at BC Place. The return also introduced Vancouver to a new version of the band, with Ilan Rubin behind the drums for the first time locally and a stadium production built around a 25-song set that would eventually run for approximately two hours and 55 minutes.
Photos by Tage Stenner / Backspin HQ
The timing gave the night another layer of significance. Foo Fighters Vancouver was the 11th of 12 dates on the North American stadium portion of the tour and the final Canadian performance before Foo Fighters returned to the United States. The wider touring cycle stretches well into 2027, with Australia, New Zealand, India and South America still ahead, but after eight years away from Vancouver, this was one of those dates where the band's history with the city was impossible to separate from the present.
The city-specific treatment had already started before anyone entered BC Place. Foo Fighters released Vancouver-specific artwork on show day featuring illustrated space travellers, rockets and planets alongside the September 20 date and BC Place Stadium. The accompanying caption asked, “VANCOUVER! DO YOU LOVE ROCK AND ROLL???” Hours later, Dave Grohl would end up asking essentially the same question from the stage.
With the BC Place roof open, the show carried the scale of a stadium concert without the enclosed feeling used for some other recent productions at the venue. Foo Fighters came on at approximately 8 p.m. and opened with ‘All My Life’, immediately setting up a performance that would pull from across their catalogue rather than lean heavily on one album. ‘The Pretender’ and ‘Times Like These’ followed before ‘Rope’ and ‘Stacked Actors’, putting five different chapters of the band’s history into the opening stretch alone.
‘My Hero’ arrived as the sixth song of the night, carrying an unusual piece of Vancouver history with it. On July 20, 1995, during the band’s second documented Commodore Ballroom appearance, Foo Fighters gave the known live debut of ‘My Hero’, nearly two years before it appeared on The Colour and the Shape. More than 31 years later, the same song was being played near the front of a nearly three-hour stadium show at BC Place. The venues could hardly be more different, but Vancouver has been part of the song’s story since the beginning.
That progression also mirrors how much Foo Fighters themselves have changed. Their first known Vancouver show took place at the Commodore Ballroom in May 1995 while Grohl was still establishing what Foo Fighters would become. Subsequent local appearances moved through The Rage, UBC, Thunderbird Stadium, GM Place, Plaza of Nations, the Pacific Coliseum, the Orpheum Theatre and Rogers Arena. BC Place had hosted the band once before during Summersault Festival in 2000, but 2026 marked their first known standalone Foo Fighters headline show at the stadium.
The early run continued through ‘Learn to Fly’, ‘These Days’, ‘Walk’ and ‘This Is a Call’ before ‘No Son of Mine’ incorporated a portion of Motörhead’s ‘Ace of Spades’. By that point, the show had already covered a substantial amount of ground, but Grohl was clearly in no rush to get through the night quickly. At one point, he reminded Vancouver that Foo Fighters had “been a band for 31 years” and therefore had “a lot of songs,” before joking about how long the audience expected them to stay.
Grohl dismissed the idea of “one of those two hour shows” and started negotiating with the stadium in real time. Two and a half hours became “two forty-five,” then “two fifty,” then “two fifty-five,” before he finally asked, “You motherfuckers want three hours?” When the answer came back, Grohl stretched out his response with, “Well, I guesssss... since it’s Vancouver.” The joke ended up being remarkably accurate. Foo Fighters finished at approximately 10:55 p.m., almost exactly two hours and 55 minutes after they had started.
That willingness to stop and talk became especially useful once the show reached its acoustic portion. Before ‘Wheels’, Grohl reflected on what he called his “lifelong relationship with the wonderful city of Vancouver,” explaining that he had been travelling here since he was young, although not under normal tourist circumstances. “I’ve been coming here since I was a kid, not on vacation, on punk rock vacation,” he told the crowd, joking that anyone who had spent time in a punk band would know exactly what that meant.
The connection was not abstract. Grohl specifically brought up the Commodore Ballroom while contrasting those earlier loud club performances with what Foo Fighters were about to do inside BC Place. Rather than continuing at full volume, the band gathered for a short acoustic section and pulled the scale of the show back considerably. Grohl introduced the first song with another joke, telling Vancouver they were going to play something “that’s only popular in Germany, unless it’s popular in Canada, I’m not sure,” before revealing ‘Wheels’.
‘Marigold’ followed, bringing another piece of Grohl’s pre-Foo Fighters history into the stadium, before ‘Big Me’ continued the stripped-down portion. The section ended with Grohl alone for ‘Under You’, giving the night a stretch where the production could step aside almost completely after more than an hour of full band material.
The shift worked because it was tied directly to what Grohl had just been talking about. Vancouver was not simply receiving an acoustic interlude because the tour required one. Grohl used it to connect the stadium show back to the punk clubs and Commodore Ballroom performances that had brought him to the city decades earlier, placing the current version of Foo Fighters beside the history that preceded it.
When the full band returned, ‘La Dee Da’ and ‘Run’ pushed the show back toward its larger setup before the musicians were introduced through a medley connected to their own musical histories. Rather than simply reading names from the stage, the sequence moved through material associated with the people currently making up Foo Fighters. Chris Shiflett’s history with No Use for a Name, Nate Mendel’s years with Sunny Day Real Estate, Rami Jaffee’s connection to The Wallflowers, Pat Smear’s work with The Germs and Rubin’s own project The New Regime were all represented through pieces of ‘Invincible’, ‘Seven’, ‘One Headlight’, ‘Manimal’ and ‘Tap Dancing in a Minefield’.
For Vancouver, Rubin’s place in that sequence mattered. The last time Foo Fighters played here, at Rogers Arena on September 8, 2018, Taylor Hawkins was still behind the kit. The 2026 return was the first local Foo Fighters concert with Rubin on drums, giving the band introduction segment a practical purpose beyond simply acknowledging the touring lineup.
The later portion moved back into some of Foo Fighters’ largest songs with ‘Monkey Wrench’ and ‘Breakout’, while ‘Window’ represented Your Favorite Toy, the band’s 12th studio album. Its relatively limited presence reinforced what the rest of the night had already made clear. ‘Take Cover’ is not structured as a show built to push one record above everything else. Vancouver received a career-spanning set where new material had to sit beside songs that have been accumulating for more than three decades.
‘Aurora’ arrived late in the main set, carrying an additional connection to where Foo Fighters have been since their previous Vancouver appearance. The song has remained closely associated with Hawkins during current performances, and even without attaching any unverified Vancouver-specific dedication to the moment, its place in the set inevitably carried different weight in a city that had last seen Foo Fighters with Hawkins eight years earlier.
By the time ‘Best of You’ closed the main portion, Foo Fighters had already moved between full stadium rock, acoustic arrangements, band history and newer material without rushing any of it. Grohl had spent much of the night doing exactly what he told Vancouver he came to do. In another confirmed moment from the show, he put it plainly: “We came here to play some fucking rock and roll music for you.” He followed by asking, “Do you love rock and roll?” before repeating it louder and answering the response himself with, “Good. Cause that’s our specialty!”
The encore reached all the way back to 1995 with ‘Exhausted’, a song from Foo Fighters’ self-titled debut, before ‘Everlong’ closed the concert just before 11 p.m. Foo Fighters made no attempt to separate the night from their 31-year history. Grohl repeatedly brought it up himself, and that history explained why the band could joke about having too many songs for a short show while moving from the earliest material in its catalogue to ‘Window’ without making either feel out of place.
Vancouver made that timeline particularly easy to see. The band’s relationship with the city began only months after Foo Fighters themselves did, included the Commodore Ballroom live debut of ‘My Hero’, passed through multiple venue eras and eventually reached an open-roof BC Place stadium show lasting almost exactly the two hours and 55 minutes Grohl had jokingly negotiated earlier in the night. His stories about taking “punk rock vacation” trips here gave that progression a personal connection beyond the concert history alone.
Vancouver was also near the end of this particular stadium run. Foo Fighters head next to Louisville for Bourbon & Beyond before closing the North American stadium portion on September 26 at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, with additional dates following before the tour heads through Australia, New Zealand, India and South America. After the concert, the band kept its own Vancouver message much shorter than Grohl had managed onstage, posting a collection of BC Place photos with the caption, “THANK YOU VANCOUVER!!!” Foo Fighters first came here when the band itself was still new and have now worked their way from the Commodore Ballroom to BC Place. If that progression has already taken more than 31 years, what could the next Vancouver chapter possibly look like?
Upcoming Foo Fighters Tour Dates
North America
September 24: Louisville, KY @ Kentucky Expo Center
September 26: Las Vegas, NV @ Allegiant Stadium
October 3: Columbia, MD @ Merriweather Post Pavilion
October 4: Uncasville, CT @ Mohegan Sun Arena
Australia & New Zealand
November 5: Brisbane, Australia @ Suncorp Stadium
November 7: Townsville, Australia @ Queensland Country Bank Stadium
November 10: Sydney, Australia @ Accor Stadium
November 12: Newcastle, Australia @ McDonald Jones Stadium
November 14: Melbourne, Australia @ Marvel Stadium
November 17: Adelaide, Australia @ Coopers Stadium
January 19, 2027: Christchurch, New Zealand @ One New Zealand Stadium
January 22, 2027: Auckland, New Zealand @ Western Springs Stadium
January 25, 2027: Perth, Australia @ HBF Park
Asia & South America
January 29, 2027: Bengaluru, India @ Bengaluru LIVE
January 31, 2027: Mumbai, India @ Mahalaxmi Race Course
February 18, 2027: Belo Horizonte, Brazil @ Arena MRV
February 20, 2027: São Paulo, Brazil @ MorumBIS
February 23, 2027: Montevideo, Uruguay @ Estadio Centenario
February 25, 2027: Buenos Aires, Argentina @ Estadio River Plate
February 28, 2027: Santiago, Chile @ Parque Estadio Nacional
March 3, 2027: Lima, Peru @ Estadio San Marcos
Foo Fighters Vancouver Photo Gallery
FAQ: Foo Fighters Vancouver Concert Recap
When did Foo Fighters perform in Vancouver in 2026?
Foo Fighters performed at BC Place in Vancouver, BC, on September 20, 2026, as part of their ‘Take Cover Tour’. The concert marked their first Vancouver performance in more than eight years.
How long was the Foo Fighters concert at BC Place in Vancouver?
Foo Fighters performed for approximately 2 hours and 55 minutes, beginning around 8:00 PM and finishing at approximately 10:55 PM. The Vancouver show included 25 songs spanning more than three decades of the band’s catalogue.
How many times have Foo Fighters performed in Vancouver?
The September 20, 2026 concert marked Foo Fighters’ 15th known completed Vancouver performance. Their documented local history dates back to May 12, 1995, at the Commodore Ballroom.
When did Foo Fighters last perform in Vancouver before 2026?
Foo Fighters last performed in Vancouver on September 8, 2018, at Rogers Arena. Their return to BC Place in September 2026 came eight years and 12 days later.
Was the Foo Fighters Vancouver concert their first show at BC Place?
Foo Fighters previously appeared at BC Place as part of the Summersault Festival on August 4, 2000. However, the September 20, 2026 ‘Take Cover Tour’ stop marked their first known standalone headlining concert at BC Place.
What is the connection between Foo Fighters’ ‘My Hero’ and Vancouver?
Vancouver holds an important place in the history of ‘My Hero’. Foo Fighters gave the documented live debut of ‘My Hero’ at the Commodore Ballroom on July 20, 1995, nearly two years before the song appeared on The Colour and the Shape. More than 31 years later, the band performed it again at BC Place during the 2026 Vancouver show.
Who played drums for Foo Fighters in Vancouver in 2026?
Ilan Rubin played drums for Foo Fighters at BC Place, marking his first Vancouver performance with the band. The current touring lineup also includes Dave Grohl, Nate Mendel, Pat Smear, Chris Shiflett and Rami Jaffee.
What songs did Foo Fighters close with in Vancouver?
Foo Fighters returned for an encore featuring ‘Exhausted’ before closing the Vancouver concert with ‘Everlong’. ‘Exhausted’ dates back to the band’s self-titled 1995 debut album.
Was the BC Place roof open for Foo Fighters?
Yes. The BC Place roof was open for Foo Fighters’ September 20, 2026 concert, giving the stadium show an outdoor setting for the nearly three-hour performance.
Where does the Foo Fighters ‘Take Cover Tour’ go after Vancouver?
After Vancouver, Foo Fighters continue with performances in Louisville and Las Vegas before additional North American dates. The wider ‘Take Cover Tour’ then continues through Australia, New Zealand, India and South America, with dates currently scheduled through March 3, 2027, in Lima, Peru.