The fall concert calendar in New York just gained a marquee booking. The Smashing Pumpkins officially announced “The Rats in a Cage Tour” on Tuesday, May 19, with 27 North American arena dates including a Brooklyn Barclays Center stop on Sunday, October 4. Billy Corgan and company built the tour around the 30th anniversary of “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness,” the double album that anchored the band’s commercial peak in the mid-1990s.
For longtime fans across the five boroughs, the announcement is one of the more anticipated alt-rock bookings of the season — a chance to hear a defining 1990s record performed in full at a venue with the scale to match.
A Two-Set Format Built Around Mellon Collie
The tour’s setup is the kind of programming Corgan has leaned into across the band’s later catalog years. Every night will feature two distinct sets, per Ultimate Classic Rock and Loaded Radio. The first runs through “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness” in full — the 28-track, two-disc release that produced “1979,” “Tonight, Tonight,” “Bullet With Butterfly Wings,” and “Zero.” The second set spans nearly four decades of the band’s catalog, pulling hits, deep cuts, and fan favorites across the broader discography.
“Mellon Collie” debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in October 1995 and has since been certified Diamond by the RIAA, per Ultimate Classic Rock. It’s one of fewer than a dozen rock albums to reach that benchmark, and the only double album the band has released to chart at the top.
The tour’s framing — anniversary celebration plus career retrospective — falls into a pattern that arena rock acts have used to reactivate their touring economics in recent years. The Pumpkins are positioning the trek as both nostalgia event and live archive, with production scaled to match the album’s reputation.
Brooklyn’s Barclays Center Gets the NYC Stop
The October 4 Barclays Center booking is the band’s only New York-area appearance on the tour. Barclays, which opened in 2012 and seats around 19,000 for concerts, has hosted Smashing Pumpkins on previous runs. The venue also serves as a more accessible Brooklyn alternative to Madison Square Garden for fans across the outer boroughs.
The Brooklyn date sits in the middle of the tour’s East Coast swing. The Pumpkins kick off September 30 at the Schottenstein Center in Columbus, Ohio, with stops at Boston’s TD Garden (October 2), Baltimore’s CFG Bank Arena (October 3), and Pittsburgh’s PPG Paints Arena (October 6) flanking the New York stop. The full run wraps November 12.
Presales and Ticket Logistics
Citi cardmember and Verizon Access presales began Tuesday, May 19 at 10 a.m. local time, per Live Nation. A local venue presale and Live Nation presale run starting Wednesday, May 20 at 10 a.m. local. The general on-sale begins Thursday, May 21 at 10 a.m. local through Ticketmaster and the band’s official site, smashingpumpkins.com. The band’s official fan club, VIZ CLUB, also offers an exclusive presale beginning Wednesday, May 20 at 9 a.m. local.
VIP packages include a pre-show acoustic performance and Q&A with the band, VIP lounge access, memorabilia, exclusive merchandise, and priority merchandise shopping, per Live Nation. Multiple VIP tiers will be available, with pricing varying by city.
For Brooklyn-bound fans, the New York Post reported that tickets are available now on trusted secondary market platforms including SeatGeek, the publication’s official ticketing partner, ahead of the general on-sale.
A New Album and a Lollapalooza Headlining Set
The tour announcement is the second piece of Pumpkins news in less than a week. On May 15, the band released “Zodeon at Crystal Hall,” an album of bonus tracks from the 2022-23 “Atum: A Rock Opera in Three Acts” sessions. The release continues a prolific stretch from Corgan, who has remained one of the more active legacy rock songwriters in terms of recorded output.
The band will also headline Lollapalooza in Chicago this summer for the first time in three decades — a return to the festival Corgan and James Iha originally helped define in the early 1990s. Combined with the fall arena tour, the schedule amounts to one of the busiest live years the Pumpkins have logged in some time.
For NYC Fans, A Fall Anchor
For New Yorkers building out their fall concert plans, the October 4 Brooklyn show lands at a useful moment — between the Tribeca Festival’s June run and the holiday touring stretch that typically dominates November and December at MSG and Barclays.
The Pumpkins’ touring history with the city stretches back to the original Mellon Collie era, when the band played venues like Roseland Ballroom and Madison Square Garden in the mid-1990s. Three decades later, with the album that defined that run still in heavy rotation, Barclays will give Brooklyn its turn to host the celebration. Doors information and full opening act details for the New York date have not yet been announced.
