Ali Campbell’s UB40 splinter group – best known by the branding ‘UB40 featuring Ali Campbell’ – have announced a six-show run of Australian tour dates for later in the year.

The run will kick off in Hobart on Friday September 30, when Campbell – flanked by a nine-piece backing band – takes to the stage at the Tasmanian capital’s City Hall. The group will head to Sydney next, playing the Star Events Centre on Saturday October 1, before hitting the Gold Coast (to play this year’s edition of the Promiseland festival), Adelaide and Melbourne over the following few days.

They’ll return to Queensland to wrap things up on Saturday October 8, playing a headline show at the Sandstone Point Hotel on Bribie Island (just off the coast of Moreton Bay). Tickets for all of the shows – except Promiseland, which has already sold out – will go on sale at 9am AEST tomorrow (June 22). Find tickets for the Bribie Island show here, and tickets for the rest of them here.

The tour comes in support of Campbell’s fifth album with his version of UB40, ‘Unprecedented’, which is due out this Friday (June 24) via Universal. It’ll be the last album released under the moniker of ‘UB40 featuring Ali and Astro’, after Astro – who played in the original group from 1979 to 2013, then with Campbell’s offshoot from 2014 onwards – died at 64 last November.

In a press release, Campbell touched on the album’s significance in the wake of Astro’s passing: “This album is now more poignant and special than either of us could have imagined when we were recording it. Astro heartbreakingly passed just two weeks after we’d finished the final mixes, so this is a way of keeping his memory alive.

“I can’t wait to get back on stage and see all our wonderful Aussie fans, it’s been incredibly difficult performing without Astro by my side. Remembering Astro, let the music play on!”

Campbell’s visit also precedes an Australian tour from the other UB40, who will perform their own six-date run of shows – three in Queensland, plus standalone theatre dates in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth – next January. The tour was announced just last month, following two cancelled attempts to visit Australia across 2020 and 2021.