Isaiah Rashad brings Lil Sunny's Awful Road Trip to New Zealand and Australia in late summer 2027. The run starts at The Powerstation in Auckland on Thursday 25 February 2027, crosses to Meow Nui in Wellington the next night, and then plays the Enmore Theatre in Sydney (Sunday 28 February), Forum Melbourne (Wednesday 3 March), The Fortitude Music Hall in Brisbane (Friday 5 March) and Metro City in Perth (Sunday 7 March).
The dates were presented as the Chattanooga rapper's first headline shows in Australia and New Zealand. They are part of the second leg of a world tour supporting his third album, It's Been Awful, released in May 2026, and they also fall in the tenth-anniversary year of his debut album The Sun's Tirade.
Six shows in six cities, two of them in New Zealand: for a Top Dawg Entertainment artist who spent five years between albums twice over, it is a rare chance for local fans to hear songs from all three records in a full-length set. Tickets have been on sale since Friday 11 September 2026.
Rashad announced the second leg of Lil Sunny's Awful Road Trip on 9 September 2026. Alongside new dates in North America, Europe and the UK, it took him to South Africa for the first time and gave Australia and New Zealand their first headline shows from him. Tickets for the Australian and New Zealand dates went on sale on Friday 11 September 2026.
New Zealand comes first. The Powerstation on Mount Eden Road in Auckland hosts the opening night on Thursday 25 February 2027, and Meow Nui in central Wellington follows on Friday 26 February. After a day off to travel, the Australian leg starts at the Enmore Theatre in Newtown on Sunday 28 February.
Melbourne's show is midweek, at Forum Melbourne on Wednesday 3 March. Brisbane gets a Friday night at The Fortitude Music Hall on 5 March, and Perth closes the run on Sunday 7 March at Metro City in Northbridge, an 18-and-over club venue. Each city has one night only, and there is no Adelaide or Christchurch date.
The tour name echoes Rashad's first US headline tour, the Lil Sunny Tour of 2017, which grew from 22 cities to more than 40 after early shows sold out. No support act for the Australian and New Zealand dates had been announced as of 9 October 2026.
The Powerstation is a live music venue at 33 Mount Eden Road in Eden Terrace, Auckland, holding about 1,000 people. In 1986 the building housed The Asylum, described as the first house music club in Australasia.
Meow Nui is a live music venue in central Wellington, New Zealand's capital. It hosts touring and local acts, mostly in a standing-room format.
The Enmore Theatre on Enmore Road in Newtown, in Sydney's inner west, opened in 1912 and was remodelled in Art Deco style in 1937. It holds about 1,700 seated or 2,500 standing and is the longest-running live theatre in Sydney.
An atmospheric theatre on the corner of Flinders and Russell Streets, opened on 23 February 1929 as the State Theatre and designed by John Eberson, with a Moorish exterior and a starry blue ceiling. A live music venue since 1995, it holds about 2,000 standing.
The Fortitude Music Hall opened in July 2019 on the Brunswick Street Mall in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane. It holds about 3,000 people standing and was built to fill the gap for a mid-sized concert hall in the city.
Metro City Concert Club, usually called Metro City, opened in 1996 at 146 Roe Street in Northbridge, Perth's entertainment district. Spread over three levels, it holds more than 2,000 people, runs strictly 18+ events and has hosted acts such as The Prodigy, Pendulum and Evanescence.
Thursday 25 February 2027 — The Powerstation, Auckland. The tour starts here.
Friday 26 February 2027 — Meow Nui, Wellington.
Sunday 28 February 2027 — Enmore Theatre, Sydney.
Wednesday 3 March 2027 — Forum Melbourne, Melbourne.
Friday 5 March 2027 — The Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane.
Sunday 7 March 2027 — Metro City, Perth. This venue closes the tour.
Our setlist.fm data contains no Isaiah Rashad concert in Australia or New Zealand, and the 2027 dates were announced as his first headline shows in either country. That makes this tour the start of his local live history rather than a return visit, and it is why the concert table on this page is empty for now.
Rashad's touring career began in the United States. From 13 July to 23 August 2012 he was on the Smoker's Club Tour with Juicy J, Joey Badass and Smoke DZA, the run that first brought him wide attention before he signed with Top Dawg Entertainment in 2013.
In 2014, after the release of the Cilvia Demo EP, he spent three months, from 1 March to 1 June, on ScHoolboy Q's international tour for the album Oxymoron, and he played the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago on 18 July that year. Those shows put him in front of large hip-hop audiences for the first time.
His first headline tour came after The Sun's Tirade. The Lil Sunny Tour opened in January 2017 with 22 US cities and was extended by another 24, with second shows added in Chicago, Boston and New York. In April 2022, after The House Is Burning, he played Coachella, where he spoke from the stage about the support fans had given him in the previous months.
Australian and New Zealand fans have so far followed him on record, through three albums released five years apart, so the 2027 shows meet an audience that has waited a long time. When the tour finishes, this page's history table will begin with the six February and March 2027 nights.
Isaiah Rashad Joel McClain was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on 16 May 1991 and raised mainly by his mother, a hairdresser. His father played him Too $hort and Scarface before leaving the family when Rashad was three, and a borrowed copy of OutKast's ATLiens in junior high turned him towards rap. He started recording seriously in tenth grade, briefly attended Middle Tennessee State University, and co-founded the Chattanooga collective TheHouse.
Free tracks on SoundCloud, some built on beats by MF Doom and Flying Lotus, and the 2012 Smoker's Club Tour brought label interest. He met TDE's Dave Free in March 2013 and signed with Top Dawg Entertainment, the Carson, California, label of Kendrick Lamar, ScHoolboy Q, Ab-Soul and Jay Rock; the deal was made public in September 2013, and in October he appeared in the TDE cypher at the BET Hip Hop Awards.
His debut EP Cilvia Demo came out on 28 January 2014 and entered the Billboard 200 at number 40. He was named in XXL's 2014 Freshman Class. After a difficult period he later described openly, including addiction and depression, he released The Sun's Tirade on 2 September 2016; it debuted at number 17 in the US and includes "Wat's Wrong" with Kendrick Lamar, alongside "Free Lunch" and "Park".
The House Is Burning, his first album through a joint venture with Warner Bros. Records, followed on 30 July 2021 with "Lay wit Ya" featuring Duke Deuce and "Headshots (4r da Locals)". After another five-year gap, It's Been Awful arrived on 1 May 2026, led by the single "Same Shit", and was widely praised. Critics describe his music as woozy and nostalgic, with candid lyrics about depression, addiction and family.
| Album | Year | AUS chart peak |
|---|---|---|
| The Sun's Tirade | 2016 | — |
| The House Is Burning | 2021 | AUS 32 |
| It's Been Awful | 2026 | AUS 87 |
The Sun's Tirade came out on 2 September 2016, so the 2027 shows fall a few months after its tenth anniversary. The second leg of the world tour was announced as a celebration of that record as well as a tour for It's Been Awful.
The album debuted at number 17 on the US Billboard 200 and has since been certified platinum. It was made during the period Rashad later described as his hardest, when he says he was nearly dropped by Top Dawg Entertainment three times, and it remains the record many fans discovered him through.
For Australian and New Zealand audiences who never had the chance to see the album toured locally in 2017, these shows are the first opportunity to hear those songs live in their own cities.
Unusually for a tour of this region, Lil Sunny's Awful Road Trip starts in New Zealand. The Powerstation in Auckland, a venue of about 1,000 people on Mount Eden Road, opens the run on Thursday 25 February 2027; its building once housed The Asylum, described as the first house music club in Australasia.
Wellington follows on Friday 26 February at Meow Nui, a standing-room live music venue in the centre of the capital. A Friday show there is good news for fans in the lower North Island.
Both New Zealand rooms are smaller than the Australian venues, which makes them the most intimate shows of the tour.
Sydney's only show is on Sunday 28 February 2027 at the Enmore Theatre in Newtown. Opened in 1912 and remodelled in Art Deco style in 1937, it holds about 2,500 standing and is the longest-running live theatre in Sydney.
A Sunday-night date gives fans from Wollongong, Newcastle and the Central Coast a weekend to travel. As this is a single night, demand from the whole of New South Wales falls on one show.
Melbourne's date is Wednesday 3 March at Forum Melbourne, the former State Theatre on Flinders Street, opened in 1929 with a Moorish exterior and a starry ceiling. It holds about 2,000 standing and has been a live music venue since 1995.
Two nights later, on Friday 5 March, Rashad plays The Fortitude Music Hall in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane's 3,000-capacity hall opened in 2019. It is the largest room on the Australian leg.
The final show is in Perth on Sunday 7 March 2027 at Metro City, the concert club on Roe Street in Northbridge that opened in 1996 and holds more than 2,000 people across three levels. It has hosted acts from The Prodigy and Pendulum to Evanescence.
Metro City events are strictly 18 and over with valid ID, which matters for younger fans: unlike the theatre shows in the eastern states, the Perth date is not open to under-18s.
The whole run lasts eleven days, from Auckland on Thursday 25 February to Perth on Sunday 7 March 2027, with gaps of one or two days between most shows. Every city has just one night: two in New Zealand and four in Australia.
Fans who cannot make their local date have a few options within reach. Auckland and Wellington are on consecutive nights, Sydney and Brisbane are a short flight apart, and Melbourne's Wednesday show sits between them. Perth, on the following Sunday, is the only date in Western Australia, and there is no show in Adelaide, Canberra or the South Island.
With no Australian or New Zealand set lists in the archive yet, the best guide is the tour itself. Lil Sunny's Awful Road Trip supports It's Been Awful, so songs from the 2026 album, including the lead single "Same Shit", are expected to sit at the centre of the set.
The second leg was also announced as a celebration of ten years of The Sun's Tirade, which suggests that "Free Lunch", "Park" and "Wat's Wrong" are likely to feature, alongside songs from The House Is Burning such as "Lay wit Ya" and "Headshots (4r da Locals)" and possibly early tracks from Cilvia Demo such as "Soliloquy".
We will not guess an exact set list before the first night. After the Auckland opener on 25 February 2027, the songs played in Australia and New Zealand will appear on this page.
Tickets for all six Australian and New Zealand shows have been on sale since Friday 11 September 2026, through the official ticket outlet for each venue and the venues' own box offices. Each city has a single night, so there is no second show to fall back on if your date sells out.
There is no public presale code to buy or share. Codes and "guaranteed" tickets offered on social media are not genuine. If a show sells out, use the official resale service attached to the original seller; tickets are usually mobile and name-locked. Remember that the Perth show at Metro City is 18+, and ID is checked at the door.
If extra dates are added or more tickets released, it usually happens without much warning. Sign up below for the alert and we will email you when anything changes for Isaiah Rashad in Australia or New Zealand.
When does Isaiah Rashad's 2027 tour of Australia and New Zealand start?
At The Powerstation in Auckland on Thursday 25 February 2027.
Which cities is he playing?
Auckland and Wellington in New Zealand, then Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth in Australia.
Has Isaiah Rashad toured Australia before?
The 2027 dates were announced as his first headline shows in Australia and New Zealand, and our concert archive has no earlier show from him in either country.
What is the Sydney date?
Sunday 28 February 2027 at the Enmore Theatre in Newtown.
Is there a Wellington show?
Yes, at Meow Nui on Friday 26 February 2027.
Can under-18s go to the Perth show?
No. Metro City is an 18+ venue and requires valid ID.
When did tickets go on sale?
On Friday 11 September 2026, two days after the tour was announced.
Who is the support act?
No support act for the Australian and New Zealand dates had been announced as of 9 October 2026.
Which album is the tour promoting?
It's Been Awful, released on 1 May 2026, with the second leg also marking ten years of The Sun's Tirade.
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