Young Thug's Tour History and UK Shows

Young Thug, the Atlanta rapper and founder of YSL Records, has toured the UK three times: a 2015 debut show in London, a 2017 run supporting Drake's Boy Meets World tour across the UK and Ireland, and a headline date at O2 Academy Brixton on Wednesday 3 July 2019. His touring history also includes stage time alongside Travis Scott, a long-standing collaborator.

This piece traces that touring history in full and looks at what it suggests about where a UK return might fit next. For the full background on the man behind YSL Records, see his artist profile.

Where has Young Thug toured before?

Young Thug's career began in Atlanta's mixtape scene in the early 2010s, and his profile grew quickly after he signed to Gucci Mane's 1017 Brick Squad Records in 2013. Touring followed the same trajectory, widening from US shows to dates further afield, including his three UK visits, as his catalogue and reputation grew.

By 2019 his profile had reached a new peak: that year his album So Much Fun became his first-ever number one on the Billboard 200, with around 131,000 equivalent album units and close to 168 million on-demand audio streams in its opening week. His O2 Academy Brixton show that July sat inside that same touring cycle, his highest-profile UK date to that point. Live dates became less frequent in the years that followed, and The New Generation Tour, announced 13 July 2026, is billed as Young Thug's first headline run in more than six years.

His return to live performance began before the new tour was announced. In June 2025, Young Thug reunited with Travis Scott on stage at the Summer Smash festival in Chicago, performing the tracks "Hot" and "Fein" together in his first live festival appearance in several years. That reunion came a few months before the release of his 2025 album UY SCUTI, which debuted at number six on the Billboard 200. Together, the album cycle and the Summer Smash reunion pointed towards the wider touring return that The New Generation Tour, billed in full as "YSL Records & Young Thug Present The New Generation Tour", now confirms at scale: 19 dates across North America running 1 September to 4 October 2026, followed by four European dates in Amsterdam, Düsseldorf, Łódź and Paris running 14 to 24 October.

Has Young Thug played the UK before?

Yes. Young Thug has played the UK three times: a debut show in London in August 2015, a support slot on Drake's Boy Meets World arena tour across the UK and Ireland in 2017, and a headline date at O2 Academy Brixton in July 2019. All three shows predate The New Generation Tour, which does not currently include a UK date.

2015: a debut show in London

Young Thug's first UK show came in August 2015, at O2 Academy Islington in London. It was an early marker of his growing profile outside the US, arriving as his mixtapes were building a following well beyond Atlanta, and it set the pattern for the UK visits that followed: a London show first, ahead of any wider UK run. That single London date reflected where his profile stood at the time, compared with the arena-scale support slot and headline show that came later.

2017: supporting Drake's Boy Meets World tour

In 2017, Young Thug joined Drake's Boy Meets World arena tour as a support act, a considerably bigger stage than his 2015 debut. The UK and Ireland leg took in London, Leeds, Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham and Dublin, with the London date opening the run on 1 February. Playing alongside an arena headliner of Drake's scale, across six cities in one run, marked a clear step up from a single London club show two years earlier, and it is still the widest UK and Ireland footprint Young Thug has covered on a single visit.

2019: a headline date at O2 Academy Brixton

Two years later, Young Thug returned to the UK to headline O2 Academy Brixton on Wednesday 3 July 2019, this time as the top of the bill rather than a support act. The show fell within that year's Wireless Week season of shows, and the support bill for the night included Rich the Kid, Megan Thee Stallion, M Huncho and Russ Splash. It fell in the same year as the So Much Fun touring cycle, marking the point where Young Thug was drawing UK crowds as a headliner in his own right rather than supporting another artist's tour, and it remains his most recent confirmed UK show.

Set alongside each other, the three dates form a clear arc: a single London club date in 2015, a six-city arena support run in 2017, and a London headline show in 2019. None of those three shows carry over into the current tour. The New Generation Tour's announced European leg runs to four cities, Amsterdam, Düsseldorf, Łódź and Paris, and no UK date has been confirmed, reported or rumoured on the tour as announced.

Who has Young Thug toured and collaborated with?

Travis Scott is a long-standing collaborator of Young Thug's, with a public history of appearing on each other's records over the years. The two performed together in June 2025 at the Summer Smash festival, and Travis Scott's own catalogue and touring history sit in the same broader hip-hop circle as Young Thug's. For more on that side of his career, see Travis Scott's artist profile.

Drake is another past touring connection, and the biggest stage Young Thug has played in the UK to date: the 2017 Boy Meets World arena tour, where he supported Drake across the UK and Ireland leg that took in London, Leeds, Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham and Dublin. That support slot remains the closest the two touring histories have come to overlapping in the UK specifically.

Further back, Gucci Mane's 1017 Brick Squad Records gave Young Thug his first label home in 2013, a relationship that shaped the early Atlanta mixtape scene he came up through before he founded YSL Records himself. That label, and the wider roster of newer YSL signees now built around it, is what The New Generation Tour is built around, though the touring histories of those newer signees are a separate story.

What does his touring history tell us about a UK return?

Young Thug's touring history shows a UK visit roughly once every two to four years since his 2015 debut: 2015 to 2017 was a two-year gap, and 2017 to 2019 was another two years. Measured against that pattern, the current gap since his last UK show in 2019 is already the longest of the three. The New Generation Tour's announced European leg stops in four cities but does not currently include the UK, so nothing about that pattern predicts a date on this particular run. For the latest on whether a UK date is added, see the page tracking a potential UK date.

For the tour's full confirmed footprint across North America and Europe, see The New Generation Tour hub.