V&A's Bowie Archive Begins Historic Tour Of The North

Highlights from the V&A's landmark David Bowie archive are to tour the North of England for the first time, with major venues in Scotland, Lancashire, County Durham and Yorkshire all hosting the collection before it moves further south.

David Bowie: On Tour will open at V&A Dundee in November 2026, before arriving at Blackpool's Showtown from 30 June to 26 September 2027. It will then travel to the Bowes Museum in County Durham and the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull, with further venues still to be announced. Bristol Museum and Art Gallery is also confirmed as a later stop, though the bulk of the tour's early life is firmly rooted north of the Trent.

For audiences across Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cumbria and the North East, it represents an unprecedented opportunity to see more than 100 items from the V&A's Bowie archive without travelling to London — among them costumes, instruments, photography and personal items, alongside pieces never previously exhibited, including Polaroid make-up tests, an acoustic guitar from the Ziggy Stardust era, unrealised scripts, and handwritten material from Bowie's final albums, The Next Day and ★ (Blackstar)

The tour is drawn from the V&A's Bowie archive of more than 90,000 items, acquired in 2024 with support from the David Bowie Estate, the Blavatnik Family Foundation and Warner Music Group, and now permanently housed at V&A East Storehouse in Hackney. Curated by Harriet Reed, the V&A's Curator of Contemporary Performance, the exhibition is arranged across four sections — Bowie Through a Lens, All the Somebody People, Hooked to the Silver Screen, and I Can't Give Everything Away — tracing his image-making, his stage and studio eras from Ziggy Stardust through his Berlin period to Let's Dance and Blackstar, his screen work, and the personal objects he kept close throughout his career.

Blackpool's stop carries particular resonance: Bowie played the resort's South Pier with his short-lived band The Buzz on 29 May 1966, three years before Space Oddity made him a star — meaning the Showtown run marks the 60th anniversary of that early performance.

Sir Tristram Hunt, Director of the V&A, said the tour was "a landmark national partnership," bringing the archive to audiences "in the places connected to his life and legacy" so people "across the country can experience these remarkable objects where they live."

Spencer Phillips, Chairman of the Blackpool Heritage and Museum Trust, called the Showtown leg "a hugely significant announcement... as we celebrate the 60th anniversary of David Bowie's live performance in the resort."

For the North's museum sector, the tour is a significant vote of confidence — placing Dundee, Blackpool, Bishop Auckland and Hull alongside London and Bristol as custodians, however briefly, of one of the most important popular music archives in the world.

Bookings for the Showtown dates open later this year, with priority access for newsletter subscribers.

David Bowie: On Tour will run from Wednesday 30 June to Sunday 26 September 2027 at Showtown, Bank Hey Street, Blackpool, FY1 4TQ. Visit www.showtownblackpool.co.uk/bowie for full details and to sign up.

It will visit Hull early 2028.