The Smashing Pumpkins - Rats In A Cage Tour celebrates Mellon Collie

The Smashing Pumpkins return to large arenas in 2026. According to Ticketmaster and venue announcements, the band’s Rats In A Cage Tour will run across North America from September 30 to November 12, 2026 as a 30th anniversary celebration of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.

Rats In A Cage Tour dates and concept

The Rats In A Cage Tour is billed as a 27-date North American arena run that focuses on material from the 1995 double album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness while also covering other key songs from the band’s catalog. A detailed overview of the schedule and ticket information is provided by SeatGeek and Ticketmaster, including cities such as Columbus, Boston, Brooklyn, Chicago, Austin, Las Vegas, Seattle and Los Angeles as confirmed stops on the itinerary. SeatGeek’s tour listing describes the run as covering major markets across the United States and Canada.

The tour opens on September 30, 2026 at the Schottenstein Center (Value City Arena) in Columbus, Ohio, and closes on November 12, 2026 at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, part of the greater Los Angeles area. Ticketmaster’s schedule and venue press releases note that the concerts are structured as two distinct sets per night: one dedicated to Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, and another spanning nearly four decades of Smashing Pumpkins material. Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle highlights this two-set concept in its announcement for the November 6, 2026 show. Climate Pledge Arena’s statement emphasizes how the first set celebrates the RIAA Diamond-certified album and the second offers a career-spanning selection of hits and deep cuts.

Chart and anniversary context for Mellon Collie

Although the Rats In A Cage Tour is a North American run with no German dates announced so far, the album it celebrates has a notable history in Germany. Data from GfK Entertainment’s Official German Charts shows that Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness reached a peak position of 21 in the German album charts and spent a total of 44 weeks there, indicating sustained popularity that outperformed many other alternative rock releases of the period. The BVMI database lists the album as certified Gold in Germany, corresponding to 250,000 units sold, which provides a concrete local anchor for German readers interested in how Smashing Pumpkins’ work performed in their market.

Internationally, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness has been an even larger success. Chart summaries and certification tables show that the album topped the Billboard 200 in the United States and ultimately received Diamond certification from the Recording Industry Association of America, representing 10 million units. In the United Kingdom it peaked at number 4 and earned multi-platinum status, while in markets such as Austria and Switzerland it also reached the upper tiers of the album charts. Comparing the German Gold certification with the U.S. Diamond award illustrates the scale of the album’s worldwide impact: in Germany at least 250,000 units were sold, whereas in the U.S. the total counted for certification is at least 10 million units, a factor of forty between those markets.

The musical core of the Rats In A Cage shows

The Rats In A Cage Tour focuses on the dense, guitar-driven sound that defined Smashing Pumpkins in the mid-1990s and that still shapes their identity for many listeners. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness combined heavy distortion, layered arrangements and dynamic shifts with elements of dream pop and orchestral rock, and the tour concept aims to bring this variety back to full-length arena sets. Venue announcements describe how the first set of each night revisits the album’s tracks, while the second set functions as a broader retrospective, including songs from albums such as Siamese Dream, Machina/The Machines of God, Oceania and the more recent rock opera Atum.

Press materials surrounding the band’s more recent releases underline that guitarist and vocalist Billy Corgan continues to push the band’s work in concept-heavy directions while returning to a more direct rock sound from time to time. The 2023 triple album Atum: A Rock Opera in Three Acts extended the narrative of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and Machina, whereas the 2024 album Aghori Mhori Mei was described by several reviewers as a focused, guitar-oriented record with 10 tracks that feels closer to the band’s early sound. By building the 2026 tour around the classic album rather than the newer material, the band gives long-time listeners a chance to hear songs from a formative release in the kind of large venues where many of them first encountered Smashing Pumpkins in the 1990s.

What’s next for The Smashing Pumpkins

The next officially confirmed live date for The Smashing Pumpkins is September 30, 2026 at the Schottenstein Center in Columbus, Ohio, as part of the Rats In A Cage Tour. Ticketing platforms and venue statements list this performance as the opening night of the tour, which will then continue across North America until the closing show at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles on November 12, 2026.

This article was created with AI assistance and editorially reviewed. Sources are linked in the text. Dates, chart positions and certifications may change at short notice; we welcome correction notes via the editorial contact on our imprint/contact page.