Oasis

From Burnage to Knebworth — and the break that lasted 16 years

Oasis rose from Burnage, south Manchester, in 1991. Liam Gallagher fronted the band that would become Oasis after an earlier incarnation as Rain; his older brother Noel joined soon after and took the songwriter’s chair. Alan McGee signed them to Creation Records after catching a short, gate‑crashed set at King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut in Glasgow on 31 May 1993, a night McGee has repeatedly described as an instant decision to offer a deal. Creation put out their debut, Definitely Maybe, on 29 August 1994; it went straight to No 1 in the UK and was at the time the country’s fastest‑selling debut album.

A year later, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? (released October 1995) became a generational fixture and one of the UK’s all‑time best‑sellers. By August 1996 Oasis were drawing quarter‑million crowds over two nights at Knebworth Park, with demand for tickets measured in the millions and a supporting cast drawn from Britpop’s main stage. Those shows, and their scale, would come to define British stadium rock in the 1990s.

Creation’s closure at the end of the decade led Oasis to release through their own imprint, Big Brother Recordings, from 2000. The run of albums stretched to seven studio records by 2008. A backstage altercation in Paris on 28 August 2009 ended their touring at Rock en Seine and, ultimately, ended the band. Oasis disbanded in the aftermath; the brothers pursued solo projects and for more than a decade any hint of a reunion was dismissed in public.

The work that still carries: the albums and the archive

The opening pair of albums are the lodestars. Definitely Maybe (1994) — whose appetite for speed and melody made it feel like a Friday night pressed to tape — and Morning Glory (1995), with its run of singles from Wonderwall to Don’t Look Back in Anger, remain the spine of any Oasis discussion, chart stats and singalongs alike. Be Here Now (1997) closed the original imperial phase, while later sets — Standing on the Shoulder of Giants (2000), Heathen Chemistry (2002), Don’t Believe the Truth (2005) and Dig Out Your Soul (2008) — fed a catalogue that, by the time the band stopped, placed enough songs in the culture to fill stadiums without a new release.

The Knebworth story has been returned to with the 2021 film Oasis Knebworth 1996 and a companion live album (released 19 November 2021 by Big Brother Recordings), which recast those August 1996 nights for cinemas and living rooms and reminded a new generation why the band’s songs endured away from fashion and festival bills. Anniversary work has been handled with care in the last few years: Definitely Maybe was expanded in Deluxe 30th Anniversary editions on 30 August 2024, including previously unheard mixes from early sessions. A year later, the band marked 30 years of Morning Glory with a 3‑LP/2‑CD Deluxe 30th Anniversary Edition (released 3 October 2025) that added newly mixed unplugged versions of five tracks, a singles box, and a tidying of the era’s B‑sides and curios.

Live ’25 — how the reunion landed

The reconciliation moved from rumour to reality in the summer of 2025. Oasis opened their Live ’25 tour at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium on 4 July 2025 — their first show together since 2009 — and followed it a night later in the same city before rolling through Manchester’s Heaton Park and a run at Wembley Stadium. Reviews from that opening weekend read like dispatches from an old ritual made new. Radio X’s first‑night report in Cardiff documented a 23‑song set that began, with a wink, on Hello and ran through Acquiesce, Morning Glory and Some Might Say before Noel took the mic mid‑set for Talk Tonight, Half the World Away and Little by Little. The band onstage was familiar but fuller: Liam Gallagher on lead vocals; Noel on guitar and vocals; Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs and Gem Archer on guitars; Andy Bell on bass; Joey Waronker on drums; with keys and a small brass section adding width.

The shows were designed for stadiums rather than LED spectacle. Doors‑to‑curfew timings were tight: in London and Dublin, published stage times had Oasis on by about 8.15pm and off by 10.30pm, with a quick step off before the encore. In the UK and Ireland the support each night paired Cast with Richard Ashcroft, the latter rolling out The Verve’s heavy hitters to warm vast crowds. By late August the tour had crossed the Atlantic. At MetLife Stadium, East Rutherford, on 31 August 2025, local coverage noted an 8.45pm stage time, a two‑hour runtime and a closing salvo of The Masterplan, Don’t Look Back in Anger, Wonderwall and Champagne Supernova — that last one sending fireworks into the New Jersey night. Setlist databases across the run show a consistency that felt considered rather than rigid: the middle section gave Liam’s voice a breather and gave Noel the room to sing, and the back third was built for communal release (Whatever into Live Forever into Rock ’n’ Roll Star was a typical sprint).

From the opening in Cardiff through the second Wembley weekend in late September and on into North America, Asia‑Pacific and South America, the tone of most reviews was similar: surprise at how cleanly the band locked into its classic gear, and acceptance that a reunion playbook built around the 1994–1997 songbook was exactly what most people had come for. Pitchfork’s weekend‑one piece in Cardiff called Little by Little “a marvel” at stadium scale; Irish broadcaster RTÉ’s review of Croke Park on 16 August 2025 described a “two‑hour set” that bridged generations and turned the encore into a participatory ritual. In Washington, D.C., a MetLife write‑up for Parklife DC described the two‑hour, 23‑song set as “like being at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium… or Anfield,” a football analogy that mirrored the beer‑spray chorus lines visible in fan phone footage from the pitch.

Where they are now (dated: September 2026)

The reunion has moved from tour to testimony. On 5 September 2026, at the Venice Film Festival, Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger premiered — part concert film, part portrait of how two brothers found a way back to the same stage. The film, written by Steven Knight and directed by Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace, has a short theatrical window and arrives in IMAX and cinemas from 9–11 September 2026 before streaming later in the year on Disney+ (internationally) and Hulu/Disney+ (US). It stitches rehearsal‑room nerves, first‑weekend elation and interviews with the Gallaghers into a record of a summer when a British band’s hits meant a little more than nostalgia.

On the music shelves, 2025’s Morning Glory anniversary programme followed 2024’s Definitely Maybe deluxe reissue, and Big Brother Recordings also rolled a Complete Studio Album Collection in August 2025 to meet the spike in demand during Live ’25. Awards‑wise, the band’s historical standing is fixed: Morning Glory won British Album of the Year at the BRITs in 1996, and Oasis were given the BRITs’ Outstanding Contribution to Music award in 2007.

As for more shows: as at 6 September 2026 there are no new Oasis dates on sale. UK media and specialist guitar press have carried rumours of a 2027 run — talk ranges from further Wembley and Manchester dates to a Knebworth return — and Liam Gallagher has teased the idea across social media, but nothing has been announced on the record. The next concrete Oasis date is on screen, not on stage.

What the 2025 show felt like — the details that matter

Live ’25 settled into a consistent, punchy rhythm. Typical nights ran a little over two hours and 23 songs, opening with the tape of F***in’ in the Bushes and a four‑song burst from the first two albums before the pace dropped for Noel’s three‑song vocal turn. The home stretch tightened into a fan‑service sprint: Whatever, Live Forever and Rock ’n’ Roll Star closed the main set; the encore locked in The Masterplan into Don’t Look Back in Anger (with Noel holding the mic out for a stadium choir), then Wonderwall led to Champagne Supernova — often with a coda of fireworks. Across the UK and Ireland, Cast and Richard Ashcroft set the table; in the US, support varied, with reports from the New York‑area shows noting Cage The Elephant opening the evening before Oasis hit at around 8.45pm.

The staging prioritised the band and the songs. Screens carried close‑ups, archive stills and a few childhood shots of the Gallaghers; a compact brass section fattened the mid‑tempo epics; and the three‑guitar line allowed Noel to re‑take leads without thinning the rhythm. Reviews from Cardiff, Manchester, London and Dublin described a wall of communal sound rather than a laser show, and fans’ accounts from the floor talked about curfews, strict start times, and the curious feeling of walking into a ground that felt more like a derby match than a rock gig. The setlists barely shifted, but the point wasn’t surprise — it was release, and the sense that, for two hours, a 1990s jukebox could be re‑inhabited by the people who wrote it.