Megadeth farewell tour adds Anthrax and Kerry King for next run

Dave Mustaine has mapped out the next chapter of the Megadeth farewell tour. On the October 15 episode of SiriusXM's Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk, the Megadeth leader said Anthrax and Kerry King's solo band will join the band on its next run, according to Metal Stop, citing Blabbermouth's transcription of the interview. The leg after that heads to Europe with Black Label Society and Testament, a plan also reported by ThePRP and JamBase. The announcement stretches Megadeth's multi-year farewell trek, launched earlier this year, further into next year and beyond.

Mustaine laid out a heavy itinerary. The frontman said the Megadeth farewell tour will hit the States, return to Europe and push into Asian territories, with New Zealand and Australia coming up in a couple of weeks. South Korea is back on the schedule for the first time in nearly two decades. India is under consideration and South Africa is being discussed, a territory the singer said he has not yet played. Touring is heavy, he said, and the band plans to bring a lot of its friends along. He framed the Megadeth farewell tour as a rolling celebration meant to reach every territory the band can still get to, with more touring combinations still to announce.

Thrash royalty on one bill

Anthrax earned its spot on the bill the hard way: this fall the band released Cursum Perficio, its twelfth studio album, on Megaforce and Nuclear Blast. The September 18 record is the group's first since 2016's For All Kings, according to music press including WhatListen and DeadNoteMedia. Kerry King, the Slayer co-founder, has spent the last two years fronting his own band behind the solo debut From Hell I Rise, released May 17, 2024 on Reigning Phoenix Music and produced by Josh Wilbur, according to Blabbermouth and Wikipedia.

The European phase of the Megadeth farewell tour already has a name and a route. The 24-date Breakout: Hibernation Of The Nations tour opens March 9 in Belfast and closes April 13 in Lisbon, with Black Label Society and Testament on the bill for the entire leg, according to Blabbermouth. The run visits a dozen of the 22 global markets where the band's final album reached the Top 5. The farewell is being built as a multi-year, multi-continent celebration that gives fans in every market another chance to see the band live.

The chart-topping record that set the stage

That final album changed the band's story. Megadeth's seventeenth and final studio record, the self-titled Megadeth, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 73,000 equivalent album units in its opening week, according to Luminate figures cited by Blabbermouth. It is the group's first-ever chart-topping album, and it also reached the top five in more than a dozen other countries, including second-place finishes in Finland, Sweden and Belgium. Released in January 2026 via Mustaine's Tradecraft imprint on Frontiers Label Group's BLKIIBLK label, it followed 2022's The Sick, The Dying... And The Dead! and was produced by Chris Rakestraw.

Asked what the final Megadeth show might look like, Mustaine pushed back. The singer is managing Dupuytren's contracture, a degenerative hand condition, and told Trunk that thinking about an ending would be a sad way to frame the run. He would rather keep playing the Megadeth farewell tour until the performances slip. The shows are getting better, he said, crediting work with vocal instructors and a clear read of his own condition: when the gigs suffer, he will say so himself, and possibly take time off for surgery, heal, and come back.

Dates for the Anthrax and King leg have not been announced. What is clear is the shape of the farewell: Megadeth is closing out its career with the bands that built thrash alongside it, on a run that now stretches from Belfast to Lisbon and across the Pacific. Mustaine has promised more touring combinations to come, so the biggest bill of the Megadeth farewell tour may not be the last one announced.