David Bowie's unseen 1978 Earls Court concert heads to arenas

Footage kept in the archive for almost 50 years

David Bowie filmed his concerts at London's Earls Court in the summer of 1978, on the Isolar II tour for his albums Low and "Heroes", and then never released the footage. Almost 50 years later it is being turned into a show called Stage, which will play arenas around the world from 2027.

The show is being made by Wonderworld, a company that produces concert experiences for digital screens, with the David Bowie Estate and the film-maker Brett Morgen, who directed the Bowie documentary Moonage Daydream. Its world premiere is at the Uber Arena in Berlin on 14 February 2027, as part of the 77th Berlin International Film Festival. It was announced on 27 October 2026.

Stage is not a cinema release. It is designed for arenas and other venues holding 5,000 people or more, with the film played across several transparent LED screens alongside a live lighting show and a surround sound mix, so that Bowie and his band appear to be on stage in front of the audience.

It is one of the main events of BOWIE80, the estate's programme of events, releases and collaborations through 2027 marking what would have been Bowie's 80th birthday. He was born in January 1947 and died in January 2016.

Laura Snapes reported this first for The Guardian. Checked against davidbowie.com: David Bowie returns to arenas in Stage.

The 1978 shows

The Isolar II tour ran from March to December 1978, as Laura Snapes reported for The Guardian. Each concert was split into two halves: the first built around Low and "Heroes", the first two albums of his Berlin period, made with Brian Eno and Tony Visconti, and the second given over to his early 1970s hits, with plenty of songs from Ziggy Stardust.

Bowie played three sold-out shows at Earls Court that summer, and commissioned the actor and director David Hemmings, who had just directed him in the film Just a Gigolo, to film two of them, Dave Simpson wrote in an interview with Morgen for The Guardian. The idea was to show the film in venues instead of touring in person. After Isolar II, Bowie did not tour again until the Serious Moonlight tour of 1983.

The estate lists Adrian Belew on lead guitar, Carlos Alomar on rhythm guitar and as musical director, George Murray on bass, Dennis Davis on drums, Roger Powell on keyboards and synthesiser, Sean Mayes on piano and Simon House on electric violin. Snapes noted that Eno had been due to join the touring band but pulled out because of ill health, and that the NME's Nick Kent called the line-up his finest by a mile.

The set takes in Ziggy Stardust, Rebel Rebel, Suffragette City, Fame, The Jean Genie and "Heroes" alongside tracks from Low and "Heroes". A live album from the tour, also called Stage, came out in the autumn of 1978, but it was recorded at American shows that spring, mostly in Philadelphia, and not at Earls Court.

Why it was shelved

Once the tour was over, Bowie moved on quickly. He made Lodger, worked with John Cale on music that was never released, moved to Switzerland and went on to Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps). He was also reported to be unhappy with the way the film had been edited, and the project was left behind.

In 2000 Bowie said he had simply not liked the way it was shot, but that it looked pretty good now and he expected it would come out at some point, The Guardian reported. Before his death he had floated the idea of finally releasing it, Morgen told Simpson.

For fans the film became one of the great missing pieces of Bowie's career, alongside his lost 1966 television debut on Ready Steady Go! with the Buzz and his original 1972 performance of Starman on the regional show Lift Off With Ayshea, two weeks before the famous Top of the Pops appearance, Snapes wrote.

Found in the archive

Morgen began work on Moonage Daydream in 2017, with full access to Bowie's archive. He told The Guardian that his eye was drawn straight away to a stack of 35mm film cans marked Stage. He first assumed they held footage connected to the live album, then realised they were the Earls Court shows.

Hemmings's footage of "Heroes" made it into Moonage Daydream, which won the Grammy for best music film, and many fans singled it out as a highlight. The idea of taking the full film to arenas was first discussed with the estate in 2018, but it only came together in 2024, when Rob Hallett, the former president of AEG International and founder of Wonderworld, joined the project, according to the announcement.

Morgen has spent almost a decade editing, regrading and hand-painting the original 35mm film. He told Simpson the team spent more than 1,000 hours on the colour grading alone. The film had been well shot and well kept in Bowie's storage, with the sound recorded by Visconti. Some of what Hemmings added has gone: Morgen said he found footage of a young boy playing Bowie, which is not in the new version.

The new edit combines songs from both nights, because the arrangements changed from one show to the next. Morgen described the show opening with Warszawa, the slow instrumental from Low, before Bowie won the crowd over by the end of the first half. On the second night, 1 July 1978, Bowie performed Sound and Vision live for the first time.

Morgen told Simpson that Bowie kept laughing through that first Sound and Vision, because the electric violin was trying to cover the song's horn parts, and that the cameras stay with him when he steps to the side of the stage between songs, dancing and smiling. Morgen believes it was the first time Bowie had performed without a mask or a character, after the personas of the earlier 1970s.

The trailer for Stage also turned up a surprise. A young man in a leopard print jacket seen in the crowd with his girlfriend is Mark Adams, who began working for Bowie 21 years later and still does, and who had no idea the footage existed until it was shown to the team, Snapes reported.

How the show works

The production uses longer, uninterrupted takes of Bowie to give the feeling of a performance happening in real time, the estate says. The lighting is designed by Patrick Woodroffe, whose work includes the Rolling Stones, Abba, Michael Jackson and the London 2012 Olympic Games. The sound is mixed by Paul Massey, who won an Oscar for Bohemian Rhapsody and also worked on Moonage Daydream.

The announcement says the sound is delivered as 7.1 surround through a Clair Global system, with speakers spread around the venue, and the picture plays on full-range transparent LED screens. Morgen told The Guardian it was not a film being shown in arenas, and that the audience would be free to look wherever they wanted. "The performance is 1978 but the presentation is 2027," he said.

Hallett said in the announcement that the estate had given them "an unprecedented concert experience that has yet to be witnessed", and that the show would be completely faithful to Bowie's legacy while reaching a new generation of fans.

Berlin first, with no UK date yet

Berlin is a fitting place to start. Bowie moved there in 1976, and Low and "Heroes" are two of the three records known as his Berlin Trilogy, completed by Lodger in 1979.

Tickets for the Berlin premiere were sold through Eventim. The presale opened at 9am GMT on Wednesday 28 October 2026, and the general sale was set for 9am GMT on Friday 30 October. After Berlin, Stage tours, but no other cities or dates have been announced, and none in the UK so far.

The show may be one of several ways to see the Earls Court footage. A section of the Earls Court "Heroes" performance was pieced together from newly found camera angles for You're Not Alone, an hour-long immersive show about Bowie at Lightroom in King's Cross, London, which opened in April 2026, Lanre Bakare reported for The Guardian. Reviewing it, Alexis Petridis wrote that the unseen Earls Court footage was the big draw for long-time fans.

A busy decade after his death

Stage is the latest in a run of Bowie projects ten years after his death. The V&A's Bowie archive, held at the Bowie Centre at V&A East Storehouse in east London, goes on its first national tour from November 2026, as David Bowie: On Tour. It opens at V&A Dundee and then moves to Showtown in Blackpool, the Bowes Museum in County Durham, the Ferens art gallery in Hull and Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, running until September 2028, as Snapes reported in July. More than 100 objects from the 90,000-item collection will travel, including Kansai Yamamoto's Ziggy Stardust costumes and Bowie's childhood saxophone. The V&A first showed the archive in 2013, in an exhibition that made 12 stops around the world until 2018.

A dance piece, Subject to Change: A Dance for David Bowie, by the Spanish choreographer Marcos Morau, comes to Sadler's Wells in London in autumn 2028 after a world premiere in Luxembourg, Chris Wiegand reported for The Guardian. A 3D documentary about Bowie was shown at the Venice film festival this year, and his childhood home in Bromley, south London, bought by the Heritage of London Trust, is being restored and is due to open in late 2027.

Morgen has said Stage will include surprises he is not yet revealing. The estate has not said how long the show runs, how many cities it will visit or when further dates will be announced.

We do not list Stage yet. If UK dates are announced, we will report them here.