Empire Of The Sun returns to Sydney in February 2027 with Ask That God: Afterlife, a new chapter in the Australian duo's theatrical live journey.
There are few Australian music projects that have created such a recognisable world of their own.
The music is only part of it. There are the costumes, the surreal imagery, the elaborate characters and the sense that a concert can become something closer to a temporary universe. For Empire Of The Sun, the stage has never been simply a place to reproduce songs. It is where the ideas surrounding the music are given physical form.
In February 2027, that world returns to Sydney.
Empire Of The Sun brings the Ask That God: Afterlife Tour to Afterpay Arena at Sydney Olympic Park on Thursday 25 February, part of a six-date Australian and New Zealand tour that begins in Auckland and travels through Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth.
The Sydney performance comes as part of what Frontier Touring describes as the final live instalment of the Ask That God journey. It follows the band's 2024 return to Australian stages and expands the visual and musical world introduced with the Ask That God album.
For a project that has always been interested in transformation, the idea of an afterlife feels fitting. The forthcoming show is not presented as a simple return to an earlier version of Empire Of The Sun, but as another stage in its continuing evolution.
Empire Of The Sun And The Art Of Reinvention
Empire Of The Sun was formed by Luke Steele and Nick Littlemore, two musicians whose collaboration produced one of Australia's most distinctive electronic pop identities.
Their debut album, Walking On A Dream, arrived in 2008 and quickly established a sound that felt both immediate and otherworldly. The title track and We Are The People travelled well beyond Australia's borders, becoming enduring pop songs while the project surrounding them developed an equally strong visual language.
Over the years, albums including Ice On The Dune and Two Vines extended that world. Songs such as Alive, DNA, High And Low and Way To Go became part of a catalogue that moved comfortably between electronic production, pop melody and something more theatrical.
The band's visual identity became inseparable from the music.
This was not an accidental development. Empire Of The Sun has always treated performance as an opportunity to build another layer around the songs. Costumes, lighting, projected imagery and choreography help create an environment in which the audience is encouraged to leave the ordinary world behind for a few hours.
That approach has taken the duo from Australian stages to major international festivals including Coachella, Glastonbury, Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits.
The Ask That God Chapter
After an eight-year period away from releasing a new studio album, Empire Of The Sun returned in 2024 with Ask That God.
The album marked another shift in the project's story. Its songs, including Changes, Music On The Radio and Cherry Blossom, introduced a new musical and visual chapter while retaining the expansive electronic character associated with the duo.
The subsequent Ask That God tour brought that world to audiences internationally, including Australia in late 2024.
By the time the band returns in 2027, the production has moved into what is being described as Ask That God: Afterlife.
The title suggests continuation rather than repetition. The new production explores themes of imagination, transformation and connection, with the band describing the tour as a journey through uncertainty and possibility.
For Luke Steele, the next stage is deliberately open-ended. He has described the Afterlife tour as a world of new visions and unexplored possibilities, suggesting that even a production already built around spectacle can continue to change once it meets an audience.
That sense of uncertainty is an important part of the appeal. A highly produced concert may have its cues, lighting sequences and carefully constructed visuals, but the energy of the room remains unpredictable.
Empire Of The Sun Returns To Sydney
Sydney has long been an important stop for Empire Of The Sun, and the 2027 performance takes place at Afterpay Arena in Sydney Olympic Park.
The venue, formerly known as Qudos Bank Arena, is one of the city's largest indoor entertainment spaces. Its location in the Olympic Park precinct makes it a very different environment from the outdoor settings that have also hosted the band.
The concert begins at 7.15pm on Thursday 25 February 2027, according to the current Ticketek listing. The event is licensed all ages, although patrons aged 15 and under must be accompanied by an adult. Ticketek notes that dates and times are subject to final confirmation.
For Sydney audiences, the location also places the concert within a familiar part of the city's event landscape. Olympic Park changes character depending on what is happening there. On a concert night, the broad paths around the venues fill with groups moving towards the entrances, restaurants and transport connections.
Then the doors close, the lights change and the scale of the building becomes apparent.
That transition suits Empire Of The Sun.
From Walking On A Dream To Afterlife
There is an interesting distance between the Empire Of The Sun that emerged with Walking On A Dream and the project returning to Australia in 2027.
The early music arrived at a time when electronic pop was finding new ways to cross into the mainstream. The songs were melodic enough for radio but strange enough to feel different from conventional pop. Around them, Steele and Littlemore created a visual identity that made the project immediately recognisable.
Nearly two decades later, those songs remain part of the cultural memory of Australian music.
But the forthcoming tour is not framed as a nostalgia exercise.
That distinction matters. A band can return to an old catalogue by recreating the circumstances of its earlier success, or it can treat its history as one layer in a much larger story. Empire Of The Sun has consistently chosen the latter path.
The result is a live project in which older songs can sit alongside newer material without requiring the audience to choose between past and present.
A song such as Walking On A Dream carries the memory of the late 2000s with it. Heard inside a new production, however, it becomes part of the continuing Empire Of The Sun mythology.
The same is true of We Are The People, Alive and the newer material from Ask That God.
A Tour Across Australia And New Zealand
The Sydney performance is the third Australian date on the 2027 tour.
The tour opens at Spark Arena in Auckland on Friday 19 February before travelling to Brisbane's Riverstage on Sunday 21 February. Sydney follows on Thursday 25 February, with Melbourne's Sidney Myer Music Bowl on Saturday 27 February.
The final two Australian dates are Adelaide Entertainment Centre on Tuesday 2 March and RAC Arena in Perth on Saturday 6 March.
It is the band's largest tour of Australia and New Zealand to date, according to Frontier Touring, and follows a global Ask That God tour that has sold more than 400,000 tickets since beginning in 2024.
The geography of the tour is significant in its own quiet way. Empire Of The Sun is an Australian creation that has spent much of its existence travelling internationally, so a return across the country's major cities becomes more than a conventional run of dates.
It brings the project back through places where its audience has grown alongside it.
The Scale Of The Live Show
Empire Of The Sun has always worked on a larger visual scale than a straightforward electronic concert.
The band's performances combine music with costumes, set pieces, lighting, CGI and large-scale imagery. The aim is not simply to illuminate the performers, but to create an environment around them.
That production has evolved with the music.
The Ask That God: Afterlife show is expected to continue that approach, building on the colour, theatricality and visual language associated with the previous tour while introducing another version of the world established by the album.
There is a practical reason this matters in a venue such as Afterpay Arena.
Large indoor arenas can sometimes make audiences feel physically distant from performers. A highly visual production gives the space another focus. Instead of concentrating attention only on the musicians at the centre of a stage, the production can occupy the entire field of vision.
For Empire Of The Sun, that has always been part of the point.
The audience is not simply listening to a collection of songs. It is entering an environment constructed specifically for the performance.
When The Lights Go Down
The most interesting thing about a major concert is often the moment immediately before it begins.
The crowd has already arrived. Conversations continue across the seats and standing areas. Phones are checked, drinks are carried back to groups and the last few people find their places.
Then the room changes.
The lights fall. The conversation narrows. For a few seconds, there is a shared anticipation before the first sound arrives.
With Empire Of The Sun, that transition has particular significance because the visual world is so deeply connected to the music.
The opening moments are likely to establish the rules of the world that the audience is entering. Colours become more intense. Familiar silhouettes take on another shape. Electronic sounds expand across the arena.
For people who have followed the project since the first album, there is the added pleasure of recognising something familiar inside something new.
For younger listeners, the experience is different. The songs may belong to their own musical era rather than their parents' or older siblings' memories.
Both audiences arrive at the same place.
Planning For Empire Of The Sun In Sydney
Empire Of The Sun performs at Afterpay Arena, Sydney Olympic Park, NSW, on Thursday 25 February 2027. The current Ticketek listing gives a 7.15pm start time, with final timing still subject to confirmation.
The event is licensed all ages, with patrons aged 15 and under required to attend with an adult. Ticketek also advises that backpacks are not permitted at Afterpay Arena, while smaller bags under 15cm by 20cm are subject to venue security procedures.
Frontier Member presale begins Wednesday 16 September at 1pm local time and runs until Friday 18 September at 1pm, unless the allocation sells out earlier. Public tickets go on sale Friday 18 September at 2pm local time.
Official tour and ticket information is available through Frontier Touring and authorised ticketing agencies.
The Next Chapter
By the time Empire Of The Sun walks onto the stage in Sydney, the songs will have travelled a long way.
Some will carry the memory of the first time they were heard. Others will belong specifically to the Ask That God era. The production surrounding them will have changed again, turning familiar music into something larger and less easily defined.
That is perhaps the enduring quality of Empire Of The Sun.
The project has never been particularly interested in standing still. Its music moves between electronic pop and something more atmospheric, while its performances turn the concert into a place where ordinary expectations are temporarily suspended.
In Sydney, that journey arrives at Afterpay Arena on a February night, when thousands of people will gather inside an enormous room and wait for the lights to disappear.
Then the colours will come.
The music will begin.
And for a few hours, the familiar world outside the arena will feel slightly further away.