Sabaton

Falun, 1999, and the two who stayed

Sabaton were put together in Falun, in the Dalarna region of central Sweden, in December 1999. Vocalist Joakim Brodén and bassist Pär Sundström were there at the start and are the only members who have been present for everything since; the first album arrived in 2005, and ten more have followed at a rate that has barely wavered.

The band very nearly ended in 2012, when two thirds of the line-up walked out at once and went on to form Civil War. Brodén and Sundström kept the name and rebuilt around Chris Rörland and Thobbe Englund on guitars and Robban Bäck on drums. The current five are Brodén, Sundström, Rörland, drummer Hannes Van Dahl, and Englund again — he left once and came back in February 2024, which makes the present line-up the most experienced version of the band to date.

What the split did not change was the subject matter. Sabaton have written about military history since the beginning, one battle or one commander per song, and they have never pretended the approach is anything other than a fixed method. It is closer to a publishing schedule than to a creative arc, and it is the reason the audience has grown steadily rather than in spikes.

History as the actual product

The band have spent the last decade turning the research behind the songs into a second body of work. Sabaton History, their YouTube channel, explains the events the records are drawn from at far greater length than the lyrics allow, and in 2022 the Swedish Skeptics Association gave the band its Public Educator Award for the historical material published through the channel and the band's website — an unusual credential for a power metal group, and one the band cite more often than chart positions.

That output sat alongside two albums dug entirely into the First World War: The Great War in 2019 and The War to End All Wars in 2022. By the end of that pair the band had more or less exhausted the trenches, which is the context for what came next.

Legends, and the move out of the trenches

Legends, the eleventh studio album, was released on 17 October 2025 on Better Noise Music — a change of label for the band. It was recorded in 2024 at Black Lounge Studios with Jonas Kjellgren producing alongside the group.

The record abandons the twentieth century almost entirely. Its eleven tracks take in the Knights Templar, Hannibal crossing the Alps, Genghis Khan, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Joan of Arc, Vlad the Impaler, Miyamoto Musashi and Gustavus Adolphus. Seven singles were released between April and November 2025, among them a version of Crossing The Rubicon featuring Jonny Hawkins and Mark Vollelunga of Nothing More that does not appear on the album itself.

Commercially it did what recent Sabaton albums do. It went to number one on the Swedish hard rock chart and into the top five in Austria, Belgium, Germany and Poland. In Britain it reached number 58 on the Official Albums Chart and number 2 on the Official Rock & Metal Albums Chart, both on the chart dated 30 October 2025.

Critics were warm without being surprised. Writing for The Soundboard, Luke Nuttall called the album "un-innovated, but also unimpeded", found the band operating deep inside their comfort zone, judged the historical choices a little obvious next to those on 2014's Heroes, and predicted the record would be "largely forgotten in a couple of years" while still offering plenty for the existing audience. That is roughly where the wider reception landed: a competent entry, executed to the band's usual standard, not the one that will reorder their catalogue.

The Legendary Tour: a castle, a choir, and no tank

The production that goes with Legends opened at the Lanxess Arena in Cologne on 14 November 2025, and it is the biggest thing the band have built. The tank that dominated the 2023 Tour To End All Tours is gone; in its place is a castle covering the main stage, with a second, smaller stage out in the middle of the floor and a bridge running over the audience between them. The show opens on the B-stage with an actor playing Napoleon setting up the album's premise, and runs through pillars of fire, cannon blasts, a full backing choir and costumed performers standing in for Genghis Khan, Caesar and a Templar knight.

Sundström described the intention plainly before the run started: "We're building a show that is a little bit more than just a rock show." The Cologne opener ran to eighteen songs with four live debuts — Templars, I, Emperor, Crossing The Rubicon and A Tiger Among Dragons — plus the first performance of Masters Of The World since 2007.

Support on the European leg is The Legendary Orchestra, an ensemble assembled for the tour that plays orchestral arrangements of Sabaton songs, with violinist Mia Asano, Patty Gurdy and vocalist Noa Gruman among its members. Sundström's reasoning was that the audience gets more Sabaton material that way: "we can't play all of them ourselves, because that would be a very long night."

Reviewing the Manchester Co-op Live show in December 2025, where roughly 10,000 people filled a room that was not quite sold out, Rich Hobson wrote for Louder that "it feels like something we've never really seen before and certainly not on this scale", placing the band in the same bracket as Iron Maiden for sheer scale of staging.

Where things stand in September 2026

The North American leg has been the difficult part. A 31-date run titled Legends On Tour was announced in September 2025 to open on 9 February 2026 in Fort Lauderdale and finish on 20 April in Vancouver, with general sale on 19 September 2025. In late January 2026 the band pulled the whole thing. Sundström had been ordered to rest with inflammation in both arms, and the statement was blunt: "Performing on stage means everything to us, but health must come first."

The European summer dates went ahead regardless. The band played Ergo Arena in Gdańsk on 31 May 2026 and Rock am Ring, from which a live video of Templars was released on 4 August 2026. On 1 March 2026 the rescheduled North American dates were confirmed for 23 September to 12 December 2026, with Pop Evil and Wings of Steel supporting the entire run; existing tickets are being honoured and refunds remain available. Sundström had been working through a rehabilitation programme with specialists in Stockholm, and Brodén promised a longer setlist and a bigger production than the original winter routing would have carried.

The band's first North American appearance of the year is the Louder Than Life festival in Louisville on 17 September 2026, ahead of Canadian shows from 23 September and a US run through November and December. Beyond that the calendar is already deep: a Swedish arena tour across January and February 2027, with several shows sold out, and a European leg from April to May 2027 taking in Dublin, Glasgow, Birmingham, Lisbon, Milan, Prague, Budapest, Tallinn and Helsinki, among others — the Nuremberg date sold out on 3 September 2026. The most recent release is not a new record but a tenth anniversary edition of The Last Stand, issued on 11 September 2026.