Oasis Embarks on Monumental Reunion Tour Today

It's the first thing anyone will tell you: "They won't finish the tour." "It's better to attend the early concerts just in case." "Let's see how long it takes for those two to fight." The Gallaghers are musicians, but they are also an internet meme due to their endless public disputes. On the Polymarket website, which makes predictions and launches a futures betting market on anything, the probability of Oasis breaking up before starting the tour has dropped from 10% at the beginning of the year to less than 1% this Friday, with only a few hours left before they strike the first chord in the Welsh city of Cardiff. You never know.

In August last year, they announced 14 unique and exclusive concerts. According to the triumphant promotional video, the brothers had realised that the emotions they managed to convey to the audience are more important than any internal differences. So much so that 14 concerts became 17 and soon after the current 41, all in 2025 and none in Spain. A British newspaper quickly calculated that the first 14 concerts could generate £50 million in profit for each brother just from ticket sales. Now there are almost three times as many dates, and the profit would have to include refreshments and a flood of merchandise to which brands like Adidas have eagerly joined, projecting clothing lines with the group's iconic logo.

Generating all this attention—becoming the event of the year that cannot be missed—does not happen overnight. The key to understanding the success of this tour is the generational component: although Oasis split in 2009, the memory of their true glory is fixed for millions of people in the mid-nineties.

In Manchester, the primordial soup was brewed. A city of blackened brick, industrial like few others, and the birthplace of unique artists like Morrissey or Ian Curtis. But Liverpool was less than an hour away, and Oasis always wanted to be the new Beatles. Other key influences were the 'mod' flirtations of Paul Weller and The Jam (hence Liam Gallagher's famous parka) and the immense guitars of their neighbours The Stone Roses. A cocktail that worked, although initially there wasn't a single Gallagher in the band.

The Rain was the first name, chosen by Paul Arthurs, Tony McCarroll, and Paul McGuigan, who were very dissatisfied with the singer they had at the time. Liam Gallagher crossed their path, a troublesome guy who had spent much of his adolescence hating music, and joined the band with an important first business decision. No more The Rain: they were going to be called Oasis.

Liam shared a room with his brother Noel, a music lover, guitarist, and target of their father's abuse for being five years older. Shortly after, they asked him to join the band: it was the second key business decision, because it is Noel who would end up composing almost all the big hits.

'Definitely Maybe' in 1994 and '(What's the Story) Morning Glory' the following year are the two albums that would leave a lasting memory: each has a good number of singles ('Supersonic', 'Live Forever', 'Wonderwall', 'Don't Look Back in Anger'...) and they fell into the sweet spot of captivating both critics and the public. However, during the American tour of the first album, serious fights began. That was territory conquered by Kurt Cobain's grunge, with cathartic concerts where bands had to end at least on the verge of a heart attack: nothing like the sarcastic aloofness of Liam Gallagher. Noel left the group for the first time, although only for those live shows.

In the islands, the success was massive but somewhat fleeting. Each new Oasis release (seven in total) was important, but it no longer had those past singles. Rival groups like the sophisticated Pulp from Sheffield or the Londoners Blur, the focus of the brothers' ire, emerged: years later, their singer Damon Albarn said he felt the Gallaghers were constantly bullying him. These bands knew how to explore other sounds and influences, while Oasis seemed stuck. Albarn, for example, soon after invented Gorillaz, an animated band where he mixed his pop sensibility with American hip hop voices. An unthinkable move for the Manchester lads, who had raged against the capital and remained faithful to the same idea as they aged.

In the absence of new hits, there were controversies. In the band's final years, each brother travelled and stayed separately to meet only when necessary, the concert itself. And not even then: in 2009, Noel dissolved the band after more fights and threats from Liam to his family. It was the end of Oasis's agony. Afterwards, fifteen years of rivalry, solo projects of varying musical quality, and incendiary tweets to keep the flame of the famous Gallagher bad temper alive. Until today.

A long and tiring road lies ahead for them: 41 concerts and more than incredible earnings, the harvest of the legend they have managed to create. Also, the warmth of an audience that hadn't forgotten them, judging by the six-hour virtual queues and the million-pound outlay of Ticketmaster's dynamic pricing. For a few hours, on the floor, in the stands, and on stage, everyone will be thirty years younger.