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Garth Brooks to headline BST in summer 2026
The Hyde Park festival will welcome the best-selling solo artist of the 20th century back to the UK stage after three decades away
American Express presents BST Hyde Park has announced its first 2026 headliner as country pop royalty Garth Brooks. The record-breaking Nashville star will come to London on Saturday 27 June, playing the UK for the first time since 1994.
Brooks is the rarest of paradoxes: a country traditionalist who became a stadium-conquering global pop force without ever taking off his cowboy boots. Born in Tulsa in 1962, he arrived in Nashville during the late ’80s, and by the time his self-titled debut landed in 1989, Brooks was already pushing the limits of the genre – folding arena rock spectacle and pop-schooled hooks into songs that still smelled of dust and barrooms. His second album, No Fences (1990), blew the doors off entirely, moving more than 17 million copies in the US alone and turning ‘Friends in Low Places’ into a national folk hymn.
Brooks’ ascent in the ’90s is almost without precedent: a string of albums – Ropin’ The Wind, The Chase, In Pieces – each selling in the multimillions, and each testing the elasticity of what country music could be. He was the first artist in any genre to have seven records achieve diamond certification in the US, outpacing even The Beatles. His live shows became their own mythos; mixing flying-V stagecraft with honky-tonk anthems, a spectacle more Kiss than Cash yet somehow embraced by both camps.
Never content to coast, Brooks frequently punctured his own narrative. In 1999, he released the oddly sincere Chris Gaines alter ego project, a soft-rock detour that was cooly received yet later reassessed as a curio of celebrity ambition. He stepped back from recording in the 2000s to raise his family, a hiatus that would have sunk lesser stars, only to return in 2014 with a comeback tour that sold millions of tickets across multiple continents. By 2019, he was the best-selling solo album artist in US history, with over 170 million units moved worldwide.
Brooks’ induction into both the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame cements him as more than a commercial juggernaut. Whether belting out weepy ballads or igniting crowds with frat-house swagger, he redefined what mass-appeal country could sound like, leaving an indelible mark not only on Nashville but on the architecture of modern superstardom itself.
BST Hyde Park brought a diverse range of supers to the Royal Park in 2025 across three weekends including Olivia Rodrigo, Noah Kahan, Sabrina Carpenter, Neil Young and Stevie Wonder. Brooks is only the first name announced for 2026 but it’s already looking like a pretty big summer…
How to get tickets to Garth Brooks
Brooks has been announced for American Express presents BST Hyde Park, with a date set for Saturday 27 June 2026. Tickets will be on sale here at 9am on Thursday 18 September.
