Smashing Pumpkins Announce North American Arena Tour Celebrating Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
The Smashing Pumpkins are officially taking Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness back on the road, announcing a major North American arena tour built around one of the most defining albums of their career.
The newly unveiled Rats in a Cage Tour will serve as a large-scale celebration of the band’s landmark 1995 double album, arriving more than three decades after its release. According to the band, the shows will be split into two distinct sections: the first dedicated entirely to material from Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness in what frontman Billy Corgan describes as a theatrical staging built around the album’s original themes, and a second set drawing from across the band’s broader catalog, with rotating selections expected to change from night to night.
The announcement follows a surprise intimate performance in Los Angeles, where the band staged an unusual promotional event at the Hollywood Legion Theater centered around the symbolic “funeral” of Zero, the alter ego closely associated with Corgan during the Mellon Collie era. The performance signaled that the band was preparing something far larger, though the full scale of the tour was not yet clear.
In comments released alongside the announcement, Corgan said the concept of a full Mellon Collie-focused production had been under discussion internally for years. According to him, previous conversations about honoring that period never aligned in the right way, but the current tour finally reflects the type of presentation he had envisioned: one that treats the album not simply as nostalgia, but as a complete artistic world.
The tour begins September 30 in Columbus, Ohio, and will continue through November 12, concluding in Los Angeles. Ticket presales begin May 19, with general public sales opening May 21.
For longtime fans, the tour marks a notable shift in how the band is choosing to revisit its history. Corgan has spoken openly in recent years about his frustration over earlier disagreements within the band about smaller concept-driven anniversary tours centered on specific albums or eras. In previous interviews, he explained that while he had pushed for more focused retrospective performances, the group had adopted a collaborative decision-making approach that prevented any one member from forcing those ideas forward without collective agreement.
While the current tour embraces the same core concept Corgan had long advocated for, it arrives in a much larger format than some of his earlier proposals. Rather than intimate theaters or club-sized retrospective performances, the Pumpkins are taking the anniversary concept directly into arenas.
The renewed focus on Mellon Collie has been building for some time. Last year, around the album’s 30th anniversary, Corgan revisited the material independently through performances with his solo project, Billy Corgan and the Machines of God, playing smaller venues across the United States with setlists built heavily around , Machina, and the more recent Aghori Mhori Mei.
Before the Pumpkins’ North American arena dates begin, Corgan will continue that exploration overseas through a separate European theatrical run, A Night of Mellon Collie and Infinite Sadness, where he will reinterpret the album with a 60-piece orchestra. The orchestral version of the project debuted in Chicago last year through a multi-night engagement at the Lyric Opera House, where Corgan described the audience response as one of the most rewarding experiences of his career.
Originally released in 1995, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness became one of the defining alternative rock albums of its era, producing hits including “1979,” “Bullet With Butterfly Wings,” and “Tonight, Tonight,” while helping solidify the Smashing Pumpkins as one of the decade’s most commercially and creatively dominant rock bands.
