Vandenberg Announce Their Own Japan Tour For February 2027 — Four Shows, With Whitesnake Songs In The Set

Four shows, from Nagoya on February 23 to Kobe on February 26

The tour opens on Tuesday, February 23 — a national holiday in Japan — at ell.FITS ALL in Osu, Nagoya, with doors at 17:30 and the show at 18:30. It then plays two nights at BLAZE GOTANDA in Gotanda, Tokyo, on Wednesday the 24th and Thursday the 25th, and closes at Harbor Studio in Kobe on Friday the 26th. Doors are at 18:00 and the show starts at 19:00 on those three dates.

VANDENBERG travel as a five-piece: Adrian Vandenberg on guitar, Mats Levén on vocals, Sem Christoffel on bass, Mart Nijen Es on drums and Len van de Laak on keyboards. Levén took over from Ronnie Romero in October 2021 and sang on Sin, the band's latest album, released in August 2023. Christoffel and Nijen Es were also the rhythm section of Vandenberg's MoonKings, the band whose debut album Adrian Vandenberg released in 2014.

According to the organiser, the set takes in plenty of WHITESNAKE songs alongside VANDENBERG's own, and the visit marks fifty years of Adrian Vandenberg's life in music. After three VANDENBERG albums between 1982 and 1985 he spent 13 years in Whitesnake, playing the guitar solo on "Here I Go Again", a US number one, and co-writing songs for Slip of the Tongue and Restless Heart.

Tickets: from noon on Monday, October 5, through DISK HEAVEN

Prices are the same for every date: 14,000 yen in advance and 14,500 yen on the door, tax included, with a drink charge paid on entry. A limited number of meet-and-greet tickets for each show cost 22,000 yen, tax included, and add priority entry, a signing of one personal item, a photo session with the band, early access to the merchandise stand and a tour poster.

Tickets go on sale at 12:00 on Monday, October 5, through DISK HEAVEN's online shop, which asks buyers to register as members first. Entry numbers go first to the meet-and-greet buyers (30 to 40 are planned), then to those who pay by bank transfer, in order of payment, and then to card and other payments and to tickets bought through other shops. Tickets will be posted out between November and December.

Chairs will be set out where possible, in limited numbers, for anyone with health concerns, and the merchandise is planned to be mostly T-shirts.

Before that: FULL METAL JAPAN 2026 on October 24

VANDENBERG were added to Day 1 of FULL METAL JAPAN 2026 — Saturday, October 24, at Pia Arena MM in Yokohama — on September 17, in place of RAGE. The timetable published on October 1 gives them 14:30 to 15:30. The festival lists the same five players as the February tour, and its announcement promised Whitesnake hits alongside the band's own songs.

Earlier the same day, at 13:00, Ronnie Romero — who sang on 2020, the album that brought VANDENBERG back in 2020 after some thirty-five years — plays a set with Gus G.

Back from a summer in hospital, and fifty years with the guitar in 2027

On July 31 the VANDENBERG founder Adrian Vandenberg called off a US tour planned for August on his doctors' advice while he was being treated for a bacterial infection — the first time, he said, that he had cancelled a show or a tour in a career of around fifty years. In a video on September 13 he said he had fully recovered, that the US dates were being moved to next year, and that the rest of 2026 would bring a festival in Malta and a big festival in Japan.

2027 marks fifty years since the VANDENBERG founder first picked up a guitar. On April 30 Adrian Vandenberg plays a one-off anniversary show at 013 in Tilburg, the Netherlands, taking in songs from VANDENBERG, Whitesnake, Manic Eden and Vandenberg's MoonKings with guests still to be named, and the band's website says several international tours and special projects are planned for the year.