Peter Kay tickets: What time will sale start, how to buy tour tickets

Peter Kay is about to kickstart his first stand-up tour in 12 years. The tour, dubbed Better Late Than Never, will see the Bolton stand-up become the first comedian to perform a monthly residence at London’s O2 Aren – the largest indoor venue in the UK with a capacity of 20,000.

Peter Kay will also perform in cities including Manchester, Liverpool, Dublin, Nottingham and Newcastle throughout 2023.

Demand for the stand-up show is expected to be astronomical. O2 and Virgin Media customers were permitted to apply for tickets 48-hours early via the O2 Priority scheme – a perk for its customers. However, the overwhelming demand caused major issues for the website and app, leaving thousands unable to purchase tickets.

O2 apologies to fans, tweeting: “We’re seeing unprecedented demand for Peter Kay tickets & we know a lot of you can’t access Priority. Sorry, we’re working on it. Please be patient; this is by far the highest demand we’ve ever seen for Priority Tickets in 15 years.”

Tickets for Peter Kay will be sold via Ticketmaster in the UK. Tickets will be available from 10am on Saturday November 12, 2022.

The 49-year-old comedian, who created award-winning shows like Phoenix Nights and Car Share, has pledged to keep ticket prices identical to the last time that he embarked on a nationwide tour – a response to the ongoing cost-of-living-crisis. As such, tickets for the Better Late Than Never tour will start from £35.

Peter Kay’s latest stand-up tour begins on December 2, 2022 at the Manchester AO Arena. His potentially record-breaking tour will end on December 1, 2023 at the same venue.

Peter Kay tickets will be available from 10am GMT on November 12, 2022.

A maximum of 10 tickets per person and per household will be applied to all online orders.

Given the widespread outages triggered by the level of demand seen in the O2 Priority pre-sale, it’s likely that tickets will sell extremely fast. To ensure you have the best shot of securing a ticket, it’s worth heading to the Ticketmaster page well before 10am. If you have a couple of internet-enabled devices at home – smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktop PCs – then it’s worth loading the Ticketmaster checkout page on as many of these screens as possible.

This’ll increase your chances of bagging tickets to the popular stand-up. Ticketmaster has confirmed that it will allow a maximum of 10 tickets per person and per household during the Peter Kay ticket sale. Another effective way to increase your chances of going to your chosen gig next year is to team-up with 9 other people. If all of these people are also trying to get tickets – ideally, with multiple devices at a time – then you’ll dramatically increase the probability that you’ll get through the queue before venues sell out.

Ticketmaster, AXS.com, and Gigs And Tours will all offer tickets to the Better Late Than Never tour.

Peter Kay plans to take his latest stand-up show to Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds, Belfast, Newcastle, Dublin, Cardiff, Manchester, Glasgow, and London. In the latter, Peter Kay will perform a residency – the first comedian to do so – and return to the 20,000 seater venue each month for the duration of the tour. The full list of tour dates are:

• Friday 02 December 2022 – Manchester AO Arena
• Saturday 03 December 2022 – Manchester AO Arena
• Friday 16 December 2022 – London O2 Arena
• Saturday 17 December 2022 – Birmingham Utilita Arena
• Friday 06 January 2023 – Liverpool M&S Bank Arena
• Saturday 07 January 2023 – Liverpool M&S Bank Arena
• Friday 20 January 2023 – Leeds First Direct Arena
• Saturday 21 January 2023 – London O2 Arena
• Friday 17 February 2023 – Sheffield Utilita Arena
• Saturday 18 February 2023 – London O2 Arena
• Thursday 23 February 2023 – Belfast SSE Arena
• Friday 24 February 2023 – Belfast SSE Arena
• Thursday 09 March 2023 – Newcastle Utilita Arena
• Friday 10 March 2023 – Newcastle Utilita Arena
• Wednesday 22 March 2023 – London O2 Arena
• Thursday 23 March 2023 – Birmingham Resorts World Arena
• Thursday 06 April 2023 – Dublin 3Arena
• Friday 07 April 2023 – Dublin
• Friday 21 April 2023 – Birmingham Utilita Arena
• Saturday 22 April 2023 – London O2 Arena
• Friday 05 May 2023 – Glasgow OVO Hydro
• Saturday 06 May 2023 – Glasgow OVO Hydro
• Friday 19 May 2023 – Leeds First Direct Arena
• Saturday 20 May 2023 – London O2 Arena
• Saturday 03 June 2023 – London O2 Arena
• Friday 02 June 2023 – Birmingham Utilita Arena
• Friday 16 June 2023 – Cardiff International Arena
• Saturday 17 June 2023 – Cardiff International Arena
• Friday 14 July 2023 – Nottingham Motorpoint Arena
• Saturday 15 July 2023 – Nottingham Motorpoint Arena
• Friday 28 July 2023 – Birmingham Utilita Arena
• Saturday 29 July 2023 – London O2 Arena
• Friday 11 August 2023 – Sheffield Utilita Arena
• Saturday 12 August 2023 – Sheffield Utilita Arena
• Tue 29 August 2023 – Birmingham Utilita Arena
• Wednesday 30 August 2023 – London O2 Arena
• Saturday 09 September 2023 – London O2 Arena
• Friday 08 September 2023 – Leeds First Direct Arena
• Friday 22 September 2023 – Manchester AO Arena
• Saturday 23 September 2023 – Manchester AO Arena
• Saturday 07 October 2023 – London O2 Arena
• Thursday 19 October 2023 – Manchester AO Arena
• Friday 20 October 2023 – Manchester AO Arena
• Sun 05 November 2023 – Manchester AO Arena
• Mon 06 November 2023 – Manchester AO Arena
• Saturday 18 November 2023 – London O2 Arena
• Friday 01 December 2023 – Manchester AO Arena

The much-loved comedian had planned to launch an ambitious 14-month long stand-up tour back in 2017, dubbed Have Gags, Will Travel. However, the show was cancelled soon after tickets for the 90 dates went on sale.

At the time, Peter Kay tweeted a brief statement, saying: “Due to unforeseen family circumstances I deeply regret that I am having to cancel all of my upcoming work projects.”

In the years since Peter Kay has kept a relatively low public profile. The funnyman returned to the spotlight to perform a number of charity gigs for Laura Nuttall, 20, who suffers from an aggressive type of brain cancer called glioblastoma multiforme. The Lancashire woman was initially given 12-18 months to live when she was diagnosed at 18, but fundraising enabled her to receive immunotherapy treatment in Germany.

The Better Late Than Never tour sees Peter Kay embark on his first nationwide stand-up show since The Tour That Doesn’t Tour Tour…Now On Tour, which saw Kay perform 122 dates.