From a Tokyo apartment where two musicians built tracks on a laptop, YOASOBI now heads to the roughly 17,500-seat Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. OSHEAGA, Lollapalooza, and the Bowl anchor eight shows that make up the biggest North American run of the duo's career, with a new English EP arriving the same week.

YOASOBI Announces Biggest-Ever North American Tour

On April 15, 2026, J-pop duo YOASOBI, composer Ayase and vocalist ikura, confirmed their return to North America with a tour they're calling their largest ever: the YOASOBI NORTH AMERICA TOUR 2026 "NEVER ENDING STORIES."

The tour is powered by Crunchyroll, the global anime streaming brand, a strategic fit given that many international YOASOBI fans first discovered the duo through anime openings like Oshi no Ko ("Idol") and Frieren: Beyond Journey's End ("Yūsha / The Brave").

And the tour's grand finale lands at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, the iconic open-air amphitheater with roughly 17,500 seats, a venue that has hosted The Beatles, Elton John, and Michael Jackson. It's still rare for an Asian act to headline the Bowl as a solo bill, which is part of what makes this announcement land with such force.

Full Tour Dates: Eight Cities

The run opens July 31 in Montreal and closes August 16 in Los Angeles. Two festival slots, six headline dates.

Date City Venue Type
Jul 31 Montreal, QC OSHEAGA Festival (Canadian debut)
Aug 2 Chicago, IL Lollapalooza Festival
Aug 4 Boston, MA TD Garden Headline
Aug 6 Brooklyn, NY Barclays Center Headline
Aug 8 Hamilton, ON TD Coliseum Headline
Aug 12 Seattle, WA Climate Pledge Arena Headline
Aug 14 Oakland, CA Oakland Arena Headline
Aug 16 Los Angeles, CA Hollywood Bowl Tour Finale

TD Garden (~19,000 capacity), Barclays Center (~19,000), Climate Pledge Arena (~18,000), these are the home arenas of NBA and NHL franchises. Booking multiple venues at this scale in a condensed tour window is virtually unprecedented for a Japanese act.

A Massive Step Up From 2024

YOASOBI's first proper U.S. solo run only happened in 2024. Los Angeles and San Francisco shows sold out in 30 minutes. They followed up with sold-out nights at New York's legendary Radio City Music Hall (~6,000 capacity) and Boston's MGM Music Hall at Fenway (~5,000 capacity).

Two years later, the venue scale has tripled or quadrupled. Two cities in 2024 becomes eight in 2026. The North American footprint just grew up.

The Song That Changed Everything: "Idol"

The flashpoint for YOASOBI's international breakthrough was "Idol" (アイドル), released in April 2023 as the opening theme for the anime Oshi no Ko. The track became the first Japanese-language song ever to reach #1 on the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. chart.

On Japan's Billboard Hot 100, "Idol" held the #1 spot for 22 consecutive weeks. On Spotify's Viral Top 50, it charted in all 55 tracked countries. On Apple Music's Top 100: Global, it climbed to #2. The song won the 2024 Crunchyroll Anime Award for Best Anime Song, closing the loop on the Crunchyroll partnership now powering this tour.

Before "Idol," there was "Yoru ni Kakeru" (Into The Night), which made YOASOBI the most internationally streamed Japanese artist on Spotify in 2021. Their TikTok LIVE pulled in over 630,000 viewers, the most for any Japanese act on the platform.

Why "Never Ending Stories"?

The tour name nods to YOASOBI's origin story. Every YOASOBI song starts with a novel. Ayase reads the source text, composes music that captures its narrative arc, and ikura inhabits the protagonist vocally. The duo calls themselves "a unit that turns novels into music."

"Never Ending Stories" signals a return to that foundational concept, carrying the stories YOASOBI has built so far into North America, and out toward whatever stories come next.

New English EP "E-SIDE 4" Drops April 24

The same week as the ticket on-sale, YOASOBI releases E-SIDE 4, their fourth EP composed entirely of English-language versions of their songs. The EP features "UNDEAD," "Watch me!," "New me," a brand-new English version of "HEART BEAT," and adds "ADRENA" and "BABY" to their streaming catalog.

YOASOBI has quietly built a reputation for the sheer craft of their English adaptations, syllable counts, vowel colors, and consonant placement are engineered so the English track sounds almost identical to the Japanese original when you let the audio blur. Overseas fans called the English "Idol" an "audio illusion" for exactly that reason.

Ticket Info

Here's how ticket sales break down:

  • Tuesday, April 21 at 3:00 PM local, Crunchyroll presale (exclusive to U.S./Canada Crunchyroll members, who receive a code by email on April 20)
  • Wednesday, April 22 at 3:00 PM local, Artist presale
  • Thursday, April 23 at 3:00 PM local, General public on-sale at Ticketmaster.com

Festival tickets for OSHEAGA and Lollapalooza are sold separately through each festival's official channels.

To support the tour, YOASOBI has also opened a U.S. online merch store at yoasobi.store.

This Is J-Pop's Moment

YOASOBI's arena run doesn't exist in isolation. Since 2025, Ado, Atarashii Gakko!, Fujii Kaze, Number_i, and Mrs. GREEN APPLE have all announced or played North American arena dates. The path K-pop took in the late 2010s, festival slots first, then solo arenas, is being compressed into a much shorter window for J-pop.

Anime globalization laid the groundwork. TikTok and YouTube Shorts accelerated the viral spread. Streaming erased the distance. Those three waves landed at once, and YOASOBI is the act booking the Hollywood Bowl because of it.

Is YOASOBI coming to your city? Which of the eight shows would you go to if you could pick one? And when international artists tour your country, how do you decide which ones to see? Tell us in the comments.

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