Overview
The iconic, GRAMMY® Award-winning rock band The Smashing Pumpkins have announced The Rats In A Cage Tour including a stop in downtown Indianapolis on Tuesday, October 20, 2026 at Gainbridge Fieldhouse. The tour will be one of their most ambitious live shows yet. Kicking off in September and running through November 2026, The Rats In A Cage Tour will feature the band playing two distinct sets: one celebrating the seminal 1995 RIAA Diamond certified Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness’ recent 30th anniversary, and one a career-spanning journey through nearly four decades’ worth of beloved hits, deep cuts, and fan-favorites alike.
“Staging a Mellon Collie-themed show is something we’ve discussed for over a decade, and finally the stars have aligned and exactly on the terms I’d set: which was to build a special night around its most enduring aspirations and ideas,” Billy Corgan said. “With set 1 of the Rats In A Cage tour exclusively featuring Mellon Collie songs in a highly theatrical setting, and set 2 drawing from the rest of our canon so that there’s a decent amount of variance as to what songs we’ll play from night to night: from our first in ‘Gish’ to our last in ‘Aghori Mhori Mei’.”
Last night, after dropping hints for several days, the band hosted a Requiem For ZERO at the Hollywood Legion Theater in Los Angeles. The intimate hall allowed 300 guests to witness the funeral for ZERO, the avatar Billy Corgan first inhabited 30 years ago on Mellon Collie.
Before the tour kicks off, The Smashing Pumpkins will headline their hometown’s famed Lollapalooza on July 31st for the first time in over 30 years, marking their long-awaited return to the festival since its touring iteration in 1994. Then, in September, the Rats In A Cage tour opens in Columbus. OH, before visiting multiple major markets throughout America and Canada. With the Pumpkins’ shows forever known for delivering raw performances on an epic emotional scale, the Rats In A Cage tour and its journey through the decades promises to showcase the kaleidoscopic range the band has wielded from Gish all the way to their most recent album release, Aghori Mhori Mei.
The Rats In A Cage Tour follows a multi-faceted 2025 anniversary blowout for Mellon Collie, including a deluxe vinyl reissue featuring previously unheard live recordings from the world tour supporting the album, a special reimagining of Mellon Collie’s iconic hits and beloved fan-favorites onstage with the Lyric Opera Of Chicago, and culinary collaborations with Vosges Haut-Chocolat and Erewhon. Released the same year as Machina/The Machines Of God’s 25th anniversary reissue, the Mellon Collie celebration continued what has been a furiously productive decade for The Smashing Pumpkins, with a flood of inspiration producing 2020’s Cyr, 2022/2023’s triple-album Atum: A Rock Opera In Three Parts, and 2024’s Aghori Mhori Mei.
Alongside all of his Pumpkins activity, the ever-prolific Corgan has remained busy in other ventures as well. Entering its second year, his widely praised podcast The Magnificent Others has recently featured candid conversations about creativity and legacy with Courtney Love, Billy Idol, Nancy Wilson, and Yungblud. Corgan also made his Coachella debut, joining Sombr onstage for a surprise performance. Most recently, in his capacity as president of the National Wrestling Alliance, Corgan led the hallowed athletic institution to a landmark deal with Comet TV, bringing NWA back to free broadcast TV nationwide for the first time since the early ‘90s. The new chapter of NWA dawned on May 1st, marking the latest moment in a standout year for Corgan and the Pumpkins.
The Smashing Pumpkins are one of the most iconic, iconoclastic, and influential bands of all time, shaping alternative music and culture. Since forming in Chicago in 1988, the group has sold over 30 million albums worldwide and garnered two GRAMMY® Awards, seven MTV VMAs, and an American Music Award. Their catalog includes seminal offerings such as the platinum Gish [1991], the quadruple-platinum Siamese Dream [1993], the diamond-certified Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness [1995], the platinum Adore [1998], and the gold Machina/The Machines of God [2000]. Rolling Stone cited both Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness among its “500 Greatest Albums of All Time.” It would also be impossible to envision alternative music and culture without their signature iconography such as the idyllic album artwork for Siamese Dream, the black Zero shirt, the laissez faire bliss of the “1979” music video, the gothic metamorphosis of “Ava Adore,” or the multi-dimensional live shows that sell out worldwide to this day. 2018 saw The Smashing Pumpkins unveil SHINY AND OH SO BRIGHT, VOL. 1 / LP: NO PAST. NO FUTURE. NO SUN. and launched the immensely successful Shiny and Oh So Bright Tour, which packed arenas. Maintaining this momentum, the band released their eleventh full-length double album, CYR [2020], representing yet another evolution, and more recently, ATUM[2023], the sequel to 1995’s Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and 2000’s Machina/Machine of God. The band’s 2024 album, Aghori Mhori Mei, written in the immediate aftermath of ATUM, sees a return to form for original members Billy Corgan, Jimmy Chamberlin, and James Iha, and harkens back to the band’s early ‘90s canon, where guitars, bass, drums, and spiking vocals ruled.
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