The Smashing Pumpkins are going all-in on one of the greatest double albums ever made. Billy Corgan and company just announced The Rats In A Cage Tour, a 27-date North American run celebrating the 30th anniversary of *Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness* *. Kicking off September 30, 2026 in Columbus, Ohio and wrapping November 12 at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, California, each show will deliver two distinct sets—one featuring the complete *Mellon Collie* album front-to-back, the other pulling deep cuts and classics from nearly four decades of Pumpkins history *†. If you've been waiting to hear "1979," "Tonight, Tonight," "Zero," and "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" in the same night alongside the album tracks that made *Mellon Collie* a diamond-certified monster, this is your moment *.
The tour hits major markets including Boston, New York, Chicago, Denver, Las Vegas, and Seattle †, and the band has tacked on two festival appearances outside the main routing—Lollapalooza in Chicago on July 31 and Darker Waves in Huntington Beach on November 14 †. Pre-sales start May 19 for Citi cardmembers and Verizon Access, followed by Live Nation All Access on May 20, with general public tickets going live May 21 at 10:00 a.m. local time *. Originally released October 24, 1995, *Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness* earned seven Grammy nominations including Album Of The Year and Record Of The Year, and UMe dropped a deluxe reissue last November packed with eighty minutes of previously unreleased recordings from the 1996 tour *.
The Pumpkins have been on a nostalgia tear lately—they re-released *Machina/The Machines Of God* for its 25th anniversary last summer and put out the new album *Aghori Mhori Mei* in 2024 *. But *Mellon Collie* remains the crown jewel, the sprawling, ambitious double LP that defined mid-'90s alt-rock ambition and proved a band could swing for the fences and connect. Hearing it live in full is going to be massive.