IRON MAIDEN began the North American leg of their "Run For Your Lives" tour on Saturday night, August 29, at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto.
The set is largely the one the band carried through 2025: a 50th-anniversary program drawn entirely from the first nine albums, with nothing recorded after 1992 allowed anywhere near it. One change was made for the 2026 shows, and it was the change worth making. "Infinite Dreams", from 1988's "Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son", went back into the running order — the first time the song has been played in Canada since the tour behind that album, thirty-eight years ago.
The Toronto setlist ran as follows:
- Murders In The Rue Morgue
- Wrathchild
- Killers
- Phantom Of The Opera
- The Number Of The Beast
- Infinite Dreams
- Powerslave
- 2 Minutes To Midnight
- Rime Of The Ancient Mariner
- Run To The Hills
- Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son
- The Trooper
- Hallowed Be Thy Name
- Iron Maiden
Encore:
- Aces High
- Fear Of The Dark
- Wasted Years
MAIDEN announced the North American dates last October. The run puts the band in stadiums and large amphitheaters across the United States and Canada, which is the scale the "Run For Your Lives" production was built for — an outdoor stage sized to match a setlist that stops at "Fear Of The Dark". The band will also headline Louder Than Life at the Highland Festival Grounds in Kentucky on September 17.
The shows mark forty-five years since MAIDEN first crossed into Canada and the United States on the 1981 world tour behind "Killers", and according to the band's press material they include some of the biggest concerts MAIDEN has ever played on the continent.
The phone policy stays in force. Before "Run For Your Lives" opened in May 2025, the band asked audiences to "severely limit the use of their phone cameras out of respect for the band and their fellow fans", and MAIDEN has confirmed the request carries over to the 2026 legs.
This is also Simon Dawson's first North American run in the band. Nicko McBrain played his final show in December 2024 at Allianz Parque in São Paulo, closing "The Future Past Tour"; Dawson, a former session drummer, had already spent fourteen years as Steve Harris's rhythm-section partner in BRITISH LION before taking the seat. MAIDEN's most recent studio album remains 2021's "Senjutsu", their seventeenth.