On tour
Every date the ticketer lists, worldwide · venue time
Listen
Top tracks on Spotify · SoundCloud
The profile · researched 30 October 2026
Kofi Stone and the long bloom: the Birmingham rapper who kept planting after the trilogy closed
Kofi Stone spent three records building an argument about faith, family and self-doubt in plain language over live instrumentation. He closed that trilogy in November 2025, then released sixteen more tracks in October 2026 and carried the show to Australia and New Zealand.
Windows 98, a telemarketing headset, and the Mayor of Brum
Kofi Stone was born in London and raised in Birmingham, a city he claims hard enough to call himself the Mayor of Brum. The early mechanics of his music were as modest as they get: a Windows 98 machine and a telemarketing headset standing in for a microphone. What he had instead of equipment was range. He has described being handed a wide spread of records between the ages of eight and fifteen — reggae and pop from his mother, hip-hop from an uncle — and that mixed diet is audible in work that sits closer to soul and jazz than to anything built from a drum machine alone.
The other formative event he names is being baptised at fifteen. Faith is not decoration in his catalogue; it supplies the titles, the framing and a good deal of the self-examination. He summarised his method in a December 2025 interview with Epigram as trying to be an open book on record, and pointed newcomers towards "Frozen Hearts" as the entry point rather than anything louder.
He surfaced properly in 2017 with "Stories in Pyjamas" and "Nothing Ain't Free", two songs that set the template: conversational delivery, warm sampled beds, and a refusal to raise his voice to make a point.
A trilogy about heart posture
The debut, Nobody Cares Till Everybody Does, arrived on 6 December 2019 across fifteen tracks, with Loyle Carner, Maverick Sabre and Ady Suleiman among the guests. It established him inside the loose network of British rappers working with live players and soul singers rather than against them, and it is the record most of his 2026 audience still shouts back.
Then came a five-year gap. A Man After God's Own Heart followed on 4 October 2024, taking its title from the biblical description of King David and reading, by Stone's own account, as a record about love, faith and family. He said at release that the album was meant to highlight heart posture and that he wanted people to look inwards — a sentence that doubles as a fair description of his whole catalogue.
All The Flowers Have Bloomed landed on 14 November 2025 through Tru Community: fourteen tracks, with Maverick Sabre on "Venice", Ady Suleiman on "Chamomile", Tyler Daley of Children of Zeus on "Marigold" and Jacob Banks on the six-minute "Thorns". Stone framed it as the close of his self-described mixtape era and the completion of a trilogy begun in 2019. The botanical sequencing — "Seeds", "Rainfall", "Water", then the flowers — was the first time he let an album's structure do the talking as plainly as the lyrics.
The record that came after the ending
Having announced a conclusion, Stone reopened it eleven months later. The Last Flower To Bloom appeared on 2 October 2026 with sixteen tracks, distributed via Ditto. The title single, produced by Zach Woods, is built as a diary entry over live choir vocals and sampled hip-hop, and he described the project on announcement as a moment to self, an internal dialogue of wonder, likening it to a child waiting by the window or a caterpillar in its cocoon.
The guest list is the broadest he has assembled: Mahalia, Ady Suleiman, Wiki, Jaz Karis, Maverick Sabre, Children of Zeus and D Double E. Joe Corfield and Pitch 92 handle production across tracks including "Dandelions", "No Way!", "Soufflé" and "Ghostflower", with "Gardener Flow" and "Mary's Gold" added on the deluxe edition. Stone said the album was written with a feeling of acceptance about where he is in his journey, and it carries noticeably more singing than anything before it.
Early critical reaction has been warm rather than ecstatic. Legends Will Never Die gave it four out of five on release day, reading it as a merger of the jazzy, lo-fi boom-bap of the debut with contemporary R&B, and singling out "No Way!" for a soulful boom-bap instrumental carrying unguarded writing about vulnerability. The same review placed it third in his discography — a useful marker of where he sits with listeners who have followed all four records.
Standing, autumn 2026
Stone is now a headline act at the mid-size end of the British circuit rather than a support slot or a festival-afternoon name. The marker was 28 January 2026, when he sold out the O2 Forum Kentish Town, a room that puts him in the low thousands in London. Songkick lists 38 shows booked across 2026 and roughly 79,500 people tracking him for alerts; London and Birmingham dominate his play history at twelve and eleven shows respectively, with Manchester, Brighton and Glasgow behind them.
The spring 2026 run was branded All The Flowers Have Bloomed and moved through regional rooms before crossing to the continent: Pumpehuset in Copenhagen on 8 April, Nalen in Stockholm on 9 April, Exil in Zurich on 12 April, Ampere in Munich on 13 April and Grelle Forelle in Vienna on 15 April. In Britain the same tour took in Rescue Rooms in Nottingham on 25 March and the O2 Academy2 in his home city on 26 March. Festival appearances have included Supafly in The Hague, Beyond The Music in Salford and PITCH in Glasgow.
Attention now sits on November. Stone returns to Australia and plays New Zealand for the first time: the Tuning Fork in Auckland on 14 November, the Brightside in Brisbane on 17 November, Liberty Hall in Sydney on 20 November, 170 Russell in Melbourne on 21 November and Magnet House in Perth on 24 November. Five dates, all under 1,000 capacity, which is a sensible read of a first visit rather than a victory lap. His touring history also runs through Ady Suleiman, Jaz Karis and Loyle Carner, a reminder that this scene still books itself.
A garden, a DJ booth, and an encore from the balcony
The current staging commits to the album's conceit without overspending on it. In Nottingham in March the DJ booth was dressed as a garden and oversized flowers bowed over the stage; at the Forum in January the backdrop was outsized sunflowers and peonies lit in red and blue. Stone opened that show in a durag and a fur-hooded jacket and shed both as the set went on, which tracked the shape of the performance: swagger first, then the quieter material.
The sequencing is deliberate. "Rainfall", "Same Old" and "Water" opened the London set, and the ninety minutes that followed alternated between the bravado of "King David Flow" and "Busker Flow" and the exposed writing of "It's Ok to Cry" and "A Mother's Love". Guests are used sparingly: Maverick Sabre appeared in London, and D Double E arrived for the "Flowers Flow" remix to the loudest reaction of the night, with the room carrying his ad-libs unprompted.
WORDPLAY called the Forum show a journey of emotions led by a master wordsmith, and located what works in the gap between the two modes — the invisible chord of empathy connecting him to the audience. The Nottingham review reached the same conclusion from a smaller room, reading the night as evidence that hip-hop can be tender and poetic without apology. That show closed with Stone taking the encore from the venue's balcony, throwing flowers down into the crowd.
The show, now
A Kofi Stone headline show in 2026 runs about ninety minutes with no interval and no opening DJ filler — at the O2 Forum Kentish Town on 28 January the set opened with "Rainfall", "Same Old" and "Water" and then worked in alternating gears, pairing the harder-flowing "King David Flow" and "Busker Flow" against "It's Ok to Cry" and "A Mother's Love", with the bulk of the material drawn from All The Flowers Have Bloomed and the 2019 debut supplying the sing-along moments. Staging is built around the album's garden imagery: oversized sunflowers and peonies behind the stage under red and blue light in London, and a DJ booth dressed as a garden with flowers bowing over it in Nottingham in March. Stone performs in street clothes — a durag and fur-hooded jacket at the Forum, both discarded as the night loosened — and uses guests sparingly rather than as a crutch, with Maverick Sabre appearing in London and D Double E joining for the "Flowers Flow" remix to the biggest response of the evening, thousands of people carrying his ad-libs unprompted. Support on the spring UK run came from Saiming, an alternative rapper from South London. Reviewers describe the result as a journey of emotions led by a master wordsmith, and credit the connection rather than the spectacle: WORDPLAY pointed to the chord of empathy running between him and the room, while the Nottingham write-up read the night as proof that hip-hop can still be tender and poetic. Expect an encore that breaks the frame — at Rescue Rooms on 25 March he took it from the venue balcony and threw flowers down into the crowd. The November 2026 Australian and New Zealand dates are in rooms of under 1,000, from the Tuning Fork in Auckland to Magnet House in Perth, so the same show will land considerably closer up.
Researched from wordplaymagazine.com · leftlion.co.uk · setlist.fm · songkick.com · beat.com.au · mixtapemadness.com · mixtapemadness.com · mixtapemadness.com
Pictures
The ticketer's photographs
