Nearly six decades after forming on the North Side, Chicago are touring harder than most bands half their age — with Lee Loughnane the only founder still on stage, Venezuelan tenor Rudy Cardenas newly installed at the microphone since June 2026, and a run of dates that stretches from a Las Vegas residency through a summer with Styx to mid-November.

The Big Thing, then the transit authority, then just Chicago

The band came together in Chicago in 1967 around seven players: Robert Lamm on keyboards, Terry Kath on guitar, Peter Cetera on bass, Danny Seraphine on drums, and a three-man horn front of Lee Loughnane on trumpet, James Pankow on trombone and Walter Parazaider on woodwinds. They worked first as The Big Thing, became The Chicago Transit Authority in 1968, and shortened that to Chicago in 1969.

The idea was simple and, at the time, unusual: put a jazz horn section inside a rock rhythm section and write for both. It worked on a commercial scale almost nobody predicted. The group went on to place five consecutive albums at number one on the Billboard 200, landed twenty top-ten singles, and has sold more than 100 million records worldwide, over 40 million of them in the United States.

The run of Roman-numeral album titles — the band's own joke on itself, and a filing system — became a kind of signature. So did the practice of writing suites rather than singles and then letting radio carve the singles out.

The records that still fill the set

The 1969 debut, Chicago Transit Authority, arrived as a double album by an unknown group and refused to go away. Chicago II followed in 1970 and Chicago V in 1972, by which point the horn arrangements and Kath's guitar playing were the band's identity. Chicago IX: Chicago's Greatest Hits, their first compilation, topped the album chart in 1975 and has sold more than five million copies.

Kath died on 23 January 1978 from an accidental self-inflicted gunshot wound, and the group that re-emerged in the 1980s was a different proposition — Cetera's ballads at the front, the horns pushed behind them. That version produced Chicago 17 in 1984 and the band's only competitive Grammy, for "If You Leave Me Now" in 1976. A Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award followed on 16 October 2020, four years after the original line-up was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016.

New material has been sparse. Chicago XXXVIII: Born for This Moment, released on 15 July 2022 on BMG and produced by Joe Thomas, was their 26th studio album and the first set of original songs since 2014's Chicago XXXVI: Now; it reached number 21 on the US Top Album Sales chart. Much of it grew out of writing Lamm did during the pandemic with Jim Peterik and Bruce Gaitsch. The most recent release is a catalogue job rather than a new record: Rhino's Chicago IX: Greatest Hits Expanded, issued on 8 August 2025 for the compilation's fiftieth anniversary, which pushes the original eleven tracks out to twenty-one, adds "Street Player", "Thunder and Lightning", "Baby, What a Big Surprise", "Questions 67 and 68" and "Free", uses Steven Wilson's 2017 remixes for several of the 1970 recordings, and swaps the white sleeve for gold.

One founder on stage

The line-up question has shadowed Chicago for years, and in 2026 it became unavoidable. Robert Lamm and James Pankow stopped touring in 2025 for health reasons. Loughnane confirmed in April 2026 that neither has retired and both remain members of the band — they simply are not travelling. That leaves Loughnane, the trumpet player, as the only founding member actually on stage, with Parazaider long retired, Seraphine gone since 1990 and Kath dead for nearly half a century.

The touring group around him is nine strong: Ray Herrmann on saxophone and flute, Nick Lane on trombone, Walfredo Reyes Jr. on drums, Ramon "Ray" Yslas on percussion, Tony Obrohta on guitar, Eric Baines on bass and vocals, and Carlos Murguía and Justin Avery on keyboards and vocals.

The newest arrival is the most conspicuous. Neil Donell, the tenor who had carried the Cetera parts since 2018, left this year; Venezuelan singer Rudy Cardenas joined on 1 June 2026 and made his concert debut with the band on 10 June at the San Diego County Fair in Del Mar, California, a little over four weeks before the summer tour began. Reviewers who caught him in those first weeks described him holding the high ballad material without strain. The arrangement the band has settled on is candid about what it is: three decision-makers who own the name, a hired ensemble playing the book, and a horn section that still has one of the original three in it.

2026: Las Vegas, Styx, and an extension into November

The year opened with a nine-night engagement at the Venetian Theatre in Las Vegas across February — the 13th, 14th, 15th, 18th, 20th, 21st, 25th, 27th and 28th, all at 8pm. It was the band's ninth consecutive year at the room and took their total there to sixty shows, the longest-running residency in the theatre's history.

The main business of the year was a first-ever joint tour with Styx, the other band named for the same city. The Windy Cities Tour — All the Hits…Your Kind of Tour was announced for 25 markets, with artist presales on 2 December 2025 and a general on-sale on 5 December. It opened on 13 July 2026 at the iTHINK Financial Amphitheatre in West Palm Beach, took in West Palm Beach, Tampa, Charlotte, St. Louis, Kansas City, Denver and the Allstate Arena in Rosemont among others, and closed on 6 September in Los Angeles. "We are excited about the summer tour," Loughnane said when it was announced; Styx's Tommy Shaw called the pairing "a major thrill all on its own".

On 10 August 2026, with the joint run still going, the band added eighteen headline dates of their own, most of them on sale from 14 August at 10am local time. That leg started on 17 September in Paso Robles, worked up the West Coast and into the mountain states through Reno, Hillsboro, Puyallup, Spokane, Missoula, Billings and Idaho Falls to 2 October, then picked up again on 5 November in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania for an east-coast stretch through Atlantic City, Port Chester, Wallingford, Westbury, Salamanca and two nights in Youngstown, finishing on 18 November in Mt Pleasant, Michigan.

What the reviews are actually saying

The consensus from this summer is consistent and slightly surprising given how much of the band has turned over: the sound survives. A reviewer at the Morton Amphitheater in Riverside, Missouri on 25 August put it plainly — "the sound….THAT sound that is so singularly Chicago, remains loud and clear". At Ameris Amphitheatre in Alpharetta on 17 July, the write-up singled out the blend of the horn line rather than any individual, and credited Cardenas with energy rather than imitation. The Ruoff Music Center review from 2 August made the same point about Loughnane, Herrmann and Lane continuing to "give the songs their familiar punch".

The criticism, where it exists, is the obvious one: this is a catalogue act playing a fixed programme, and the band has stopped pretending otherwise. Video tributes to departed and retired members run during the set. The two covers from the group's bar-band years — a Spencer Davis Group number and a Jackie Wilson number — are the closest thing to a deep cut most nights.

Aggregated fan and critic scores put the band around 78 per cent on live performance across 82 reviews, with the last twelve months tracking at a similar level. For a group that has been on the road since 1967 and is now one founder deep, that is a durable number.

The show, now

A Chicago show in 2026 runs close to two hours and sits between 18 and 23 songs depending on the night — 23 on the Styx tour's opening night in West Palm Beach on 13 July, around 21 plus two encores at Alpharetta on 17 July, 18 plus encores at Riverside, Missouri on 25 August. On the summer co-headline dates Chicago played first and Styx closed; the autumn dates from 17 September are headline shows of their own. The set is drawn almost entirely from the first fifteen years, weighted towards the early self-titled records, with two covers from the band's pre-fame days — a Spencer Davis Group song and a Jackie Wilson song — as the only real detour. "Saturday in the Park", "If You Leave Me Now" and "You're the Inspiration" are fixtures, and "25 or 6 to 4" closes as the encore. Staging is modest by arena standards: video tributes to departed and retired members run behind the band, and at Ruoff Music Center on 2 August four violinists were added to the stage. Reviewers this summer have consistently praised the three-man horn front of Loughnane, Herrmann and Lane as the thing holding the whole operation together, and have been warmer than expected about Rudy Cardenas, who had been in the job barely a month when the tour started.

Researched from en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · ultimateclassicrock.com · ultimateclassicrock.com · ultimateclassicrock.com · rockcellarmagazine.com · rockcellarmagazine.com · onstagemagazine.com

Formed: 1967, as The Big Thing; renamed The Chicago Transit Authority in 1968 and Chicago in 1969
From: Chicago, Illinois
Genre: Rock with a jazz horn section
Key records: Chicago Transit Authority (1969), Chicago II (1970), Chicago V (1972), Chicago IX: Chicago's Greatest Hits (1975), Chicago 17 (1984)
Members: Lee Loughnane (trumpet, co-founder); Rudy Cardenas (lead vocals, since 1 June 2026); Ray Herrmann (sax/flute); Nick Lane (trombone); Walfredo Reyes Jr. (drums); Ramon Yslas (percussion); Tony Obrohta (guitar); Eric Baines (bass); Carlos Murguía and Justin Avery (keyboards). Robert Lamm and James Pankow remain members but stopped touring in 2025.
Latest release: Chicago IX: Greatest Hits Expanded (Rhino, 8 August 2025); last album of new songs was Chicago XXXVIII: Born for This Moment (BMG, 15 July 2022)
Awards: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 2016; Grammy for "If You Leave Me Now", 1976; Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, 16 October 2020
Sales: More than 100 million records worldwide; five consecutive number-one Billboard 200 albums; 20 top-ten singles

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