On tour
Every date the ticketer lists, worldwide · venue time
Listen
SoundCloud
The profile · researched 20 September 2026
Self Control, Infinito and three arenas: Raf's forty-second year on the road
Raffaele Riefoli has spent four decades outliving the English-language hit that made him, and in 2026 he has a Sanremo entry, a new single and three October arena dates built around the twenty-fifth anniversary of Infinito.
Margherita di Savoia, London, and a hit in the wrong language
Raffaele Riefoli was born on 29 September 1959 in Margherita di Savoia, a salt-pan town on the Adriatic coast of Apulia. He moved to London in the early 1980s and came back into the Italian studio system with a song written in English: Self Control, co-written with the lyricist Giancarlo Bigazzi and the American musician Steve Piccolo, released in 1984 under the single name Raf. It reached number one in Switzerland and Austria, number two in Germany, and charted in France. The album of the same name, sung in English, was his debut.
The complication arrived at the same time. Laura Branigan cut Self Control in the same year and took her version to number four on the Billboard Hot 100, which decided the American market and left Raf holding a worldwide hit that, in large parts of the world, was credited to somebody else. Four decades on the song is still the most frequently logged title across his documented setlists, and it still opens his shows.
Switching to Italian, and the decade that stuck
The career that lasted was the Italian-language one. In 1987 he sang Gente di mare as a duet with Umberto Tozzi; the pair took it to the Eurovision Song Contest as Italy's entry and finished third. The song has never left his repertoire and now closes the set.
From there he built a domestic catalogue rather than another international single. Ti pretendo won the Festivalbar in 1989. Cannibali, released in 1993, went platinum in Italy, and Il battito animale from that record took a second Festivalbar in the same year. He has entered the Sanremo Festival five times — 1988, 1989, 1991, 2015 and 2026 — and released fourteen studio albums between the 1984 debut and 2015. The tour material circulated by his promoter puts total sales above twenty million.
Infinito, and the anniversary the current tour is hung on
Infinito, released in 2001, is the record the whole of 2026 has been organised around. It gave him a title song that sits at the centre of the set and a name for two separate tours twenty-five years later.
The years after it were steadier than the years before. Albums continued into 2015; between 2018 and 2019 he toured extensively with Umberto Tozzi, the pair working their shared history as a double bill. In 2023 he published an autobiography, La mia casa. In 2024 he marked forty years of Self Control with an anniversary tour and a set of previously unreleased duets issued as RAF 40 – The Unreleased Duets, which as of mid-September 2026 is still the most recent album listed on his own website.
Sanremo 2026 and the album that has not landed yet
His fifth Sanremo came in February 2026. The festival ran from 24 to 28 February at the Teatro Ariston with thirty acts in competition and was won by Sal Da Vinci with Per sempre sì, which took Italy's Eurovision place. Raf competed with Ora e per sempre, written with his son Samuele Riefoli — a slow, autobiographical song about a long relationship measured against the passing of time, with vintage electronic textures under it. He finished eighteenth. The single did not hold a position on the Italian charts once the festival was over.
The point of going was the record behind it. On 29 May 2026 he released Pazzi stupidi ragazzi, a summer single with an electropop production, and the announcement that followed said an album of new material would arrive in the autumn carrying both new songs. The title and release date have still not been published, and the official site has not updated its discography page. That leaves the October arena dates arriving either just before the album or just after it, which is the one genuinely unsettled part of the year.
A summer spent in piazzas and Roman theatres
INFINITO – ESTATE 2026 was the outdoor half: festivals, open-air theatres, castle grounds and town squares rather than sheds. It opened on 16 July at the Multiculturita Summer Festival in Capurso, outside Bari, and worked north and south across the peninsula through Carovigno on 18 July, Bard on 1 August, Trieste on 3 August, Orbetello on 5 August, Castiglioncello on 6 August and Sirolo on 8 August. On 10 August he played the cathedral steps at Noto for the Scale della Musica series; on 30 August the Teatro Romano in Verona; on 1 September the Piazza dei Signori for Vicenza in Festival. Four dates on the run were free to enter, at Foggia, Montesilvano, La Maddalena and Carbonia.
The run was extended twice as it went, with additional summer dates announced in late May alongside the new single and more added later in the season. Its final stop is 27 September at the Area Eventi of the Nuova Fiera del Levante in Bari — a home-region close, roughly seventy kilometres from where he was born. The tour is promoted by Friends & Partners and produced by Girotondo srl with Momy Records.
Three indoor dates in October
The autumn leg, INFINITO – Palasport 2026, is deliberately small: three arena shows and nothing else. Naples, Palapartenope, on 9 October; Milan, the Unipol Forum at Assago, on 12 October; Rome, the Palazzo dello Sport, on 17 October. Tickets went on sale through TicketOne from 18 December 2025, nine and a half months ahead of the first night, and remain the three dates currently on sale.
The promoter's description of the arena shows is unusually plain for the format — a linear show built on the direct relationship with the audience, running through the fourteen studio albums and taking in the Sanremo entry, rather than a production piece. No support act has been announced for any of the three. Anyone weighing the indoor dates against the summer ones is choosing a bigger room and a longer, better-equipped version of the same set, without the Roman-theatre setting that gave the July and August shows most of their character.
The show, now
The 2026 show runs to around eighteen songs and is built as a single arc rather than a hits medley with an encore tacked on. Published setlists for the run open with Self Control and close with Gente di mare, with Iperbole, Cosa resterà degli anni '80, Un'emozione inaspettata, Ti pretendo and Due early; the new single Pazzi stupidi ragazzi sits about a third of the way in; Il battito animale and Inevitabile follia carry the middle; and Infinito lands at the centre of the second half, followed straight away by the Sanremo entry Ora e per sempre, then Sei la più bella del mondo, Liberi and Stai con me. The summer staging was dictated by the venues — Roman theatres, castle courtyards, town squares and the cathedral steps at Noto — so it is a band-led show rather than a production, and four of the dates were free to enter. The three October arena dates at the Palapartenope in Naples (9 October), the Unipol Forum in Milan (12 October) and the Palazzo dello Sport in Rome (17 October) carry the same set indoors; the promoter bills them as linear shows leaning on the relationship with the audience, and no support act has been announced for any of the three. Tickets have been on sale via TicketOne since 18 December 2025.
Researched from en.wikipedia.org · it.wikipedia.org · allmusicitalia.it · allmusicitalia.it · allmusicitalia.it · danielemignardi.it · donnaglamour.it · raf.it
Pictures
Photographs from Wikimedia Commons, credited
Frank Schwichtenberg · CC BY-SA 4.0
