Watch: TRIUMPH Launches 2026 50th-Anniversary Tour In Orlando

Legendary Canadian rockers TRIUMPH kicked off their first tour in more than 30 years Friday night (April 10) in Orlando, Florida. For the 2026 tour, TRIUMPH's original members Gil Moore (drums, vocals) and Rik Emmett (guitar, vocals) are being joined by guitarist Phil X, drummer and keyboardist Brent Fitz and bassist Todd Kerns. Phil X, whose real name is Theofilos Xenidis, is a member of BON JOVI and a former member of TRIUMPH, while Fitz and Kerns are both members of SLASH FEATURING MYLES KENNEDY & THE CONSPIRATORS. Original TRIUMPH bassist Mike Levine will not take part in most of the shows after revealing in December that he has "a problem" with his hand that "precludes" him "from being able to really play well."

100% of the net proceeds of TRIUMPH's Orlando concert are being donated to Make-A-Wish, to create life-changing wishes for children with critical illnesses. The concert was held at Hard Rock Live Universal Orlando, and was part of the 23rd annual Celebration Exotic Car Festival, the world's largest exotic car charity event.

According to Setlist.fm, the setlist for the Orlando show was as follows:

01. When The Lights Go Down
02. Somebody's Out There
03. Spellbound
04. Allied Forces
05. Never Surrender
06. Rock & Roll Machine
07. Hold On
08. Blinding Light Show
09. Rocky Mountain Way (Joe Walsh Cover)
10. Lay It On The Line
11. 24 Hours A Day (intro only)
12. Follow Your Heart
13. Magic Power

Encore:

14. I Live For The Weekend
15. Fight The Good Fight

Fan-filmed video of the entire concert can be seen below.

Regarding how TRIUMPH put together the setlist for the tour, Moore told Orlando Weekly: "I think we relied on the fans … You really don't know what your music is until decades go by, because that's when it resonates on the fans. And then they tell you, so as far as like setting up, you know what we want to do on the road, we've been listening for what the fans have to say, and they've spoken loud and clear to us. Honestly, after all these years, I feel like they're their songs. They're not ours anymore. We gave them to the fans. They told us what those songs meant, and we're answering to the call."

As for why TRIUMPH chose to kick off the tour in Orlando, Moore said: "It wasn't something that was initially planned. How it came together was STYX have played at a Make-A-Wish event previously, and [STYX singer] Lawrence Gowan is one of my dearest friends. When we decided we were going to tour, he was actually one of the very first people I phoned and he said, 'Gil, great to hear from you. What do you want to know?' And I said, 'Hey, man, you've been touring, and I haven't I want to know how to tour.' He says, 'Okay, I'm going to give you three pointers. Are you ready? You got to play drums and sing every day. That's number one. Number two: You've got to play drums and sing every day. Number three, don't forget number one and number two.' And I just cracked up. And then you know, little stuff for vocal warm-ups, how he does the scales, how he manages bus travel versus airline travel. What he does diet-wise to be really at game time, really, feel like he has all his energy when it's time to go on stage and STYX. I mean, he is like a powerhouse to be reckoned with, and I really thank him for that and it helped get Rik and I tour-ready. And Lawrence said to Jeff Ippoliti, who is at the Celebration Car Show [also a key fundraiser for central Florida's Make-A-Wish Foundation], 'I have a great idea for you. You should get TRIUMPH this year.' And Jeff goes, 'I'm a huge TRIUMPH fan, but they're not touring.' And Lawrence says, 'Oh, yes, they are.' So I talked to Jeff, and he told me about the Make-A-Wish event, which is near and dear to me. I have a charity of my own in Canada called Sounds Unite, which is a tiny bit similar in the sense that it's about free music, education and music wellness. But it's aimed at kids, and especially kids that are disadvantaged and marginalized. So the Make-A-Wish philosophy of helping a young person who's really caught a tough break in life, and grant them a wish is, to me, a fabulous idea. So I just told Jeff, I said, 'Yeah, we'd love to support Make-A-Wish, if you'd like us.' We were looking to rehearse more dates up here in Canada in that time period when he wanted to bring us to Florida. And everybody was, like, 'Oh, no, we're gonna rehearse in Florida.' So that was a sweetener. So that's how it came together."

TRIUMPH's 2026 North American run of shows are celebrating the band's 50th anniversary, and feature support from APRIL WINE. The 2026 trek will continue with another show in Florida, followed by series of dates in Canada, beginning April 22 in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, and running through a May 8 show in Calgary, Alberta. From there, the band will hit the U.S. starting May 13 in Rosemont, Illinois, and wrapping up June 6 in Boston. In all, 10 Canadian and 17 American cities are included on the tour.

Last month, Rik spoke to Dr. Music about what made him change his mind after previously saying that he would never tour with TRIUMPH again. Rik said: "There's a thing about fear. Like, what are you afraid of? And it's more a question of a challenge that you go, okay, well, let's just see what happens. Let's not be so afraid of tomorrow or the day after tomorrow or next week or the next month. Let's just kind of do it and see what happens. So let's ride the bus. Let's see what it's like. Let's try to play shows back to back and let's see what it's like. And I think that adventurism, that sense of trying to take something on… And, of course, I'm human. I'm afraid of things. And we're gonna find out that I have limitations; that's for sure. But part of it is to be 72 years of age and have an opportunity like this kind of drop in my lap and go, 'Okay, am I gonna be afraid of opportunity or am I gonna embrace it?' Am I gonna say, 'Climb the hill, see what's over on the other side. Let's go for it.' … There's moments where I go, 'Have I bitten off more than I can chew?' But then I go, 'Well, just chew and find out.' So it's more a question of sort of being in the moment and trying to just keep going in the moment. So that's what's happening."

This past February, Emmett told Mike Hsu of the 100 FM The Pike radio station about the fact that he previously said he would never tour with TRIUMPH again:  "What's happening here is that everybody that I do interviews with goes, 'Hey, Rik, you're such a lying hypocrite.' I'm human. But things sort of accumulated to the point where it's almost like hands got behind me and pushed me out onto the stage, into the spotlight again. And it's more the songs than anything else. They got used for hockey playoffs and baseball world series. And then Round Hill [Records] made the [TRIUMPH] tribute album and that made a bunch of noise. And [on that LP] there were all these guys like Slash [of GUNS N' ROSES] and [HEART's] Nancy Wilson, and they're all singing my songs and playing guitar. And it was, like, 'Woah.' And it's the songs. People are saying, 'Yeah, 'Fight The Good Fight', 'Never Surrender', 'Hold On', 'Magic Power'. Come on, let's go. We wanna see this happen live. We wanna have a communion with you guys.' And we went, 'Oh, man. Okay. Well, let's see if we can organize it in a way that'll make it good.'"

Addressing TRIUMPH's expanded touring lineup, Rik said: "Now I got Todd Kerns and Brent Fitz, and they both toured with Alice Cooper and Slash, and Phil X, who routinely goes out on the road with BON JOVI. He replaced me in TRIUMPH in the first place. So it's not like we don't have a large safety net. But we are gonna be able to make this thing happen in a way that I'm gonna feel, like, 'No, we're doing justice to that catalog. These songs are still happening in a good way.' And I do have a personal trainer now in order to try and get me into shape for all of this."

Last December, Emmett was asked by SiriusXM's "Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk" how Phil, Brent and Todd would be involved in "filling out the sound" and "filling in" where Rik and Gil are no longer able to reproduce the original material. Emmett said: "The big thing is, first of all, they're incredibly skilled and talented and experienced musicians in their own right. And they deserve to end up feeling like they're as much a part of this as Gil and Mike and I are. I want them to feel that sense of sort of ownership and pride in what's going on, because — and this goes back to the songs again and the way that we present them, those songs have a life of their own. But I think this hunger that everybody is understanding is out there now for TRIUMPH to come back and play these songs, I think that hunger will be sustained by those guys, even if we get old and infirm and we can't necessarily do it. I think the songs are still gonna be there, and if those younger guys wanna start carrying a bigger workload, I think they could in."

Referencing the fact that Phil X, Fitz and Kerns previously played with Gil and Rik on June 6, 2025 at the Rogers Festival At The Final, a free outdoor concert in the ICE District ahead of Game 2 of the 2025 Stanley Cup final between the Edmonton Oilers and Florida Panthers in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, Emmett continued: "In the short term, I'm gonna tell you this: I know that they can all sing fantastic. And there was a moment in Edmonton, and it actually made it on social media, where Gil and I and those three guys, in the trailer, we were just singing 'Lay It On The Line' background vocals to warm up. And I thought, 'Okay.' This was a great moment — it was one of my favorite moments in that experience out there — and I thought that should be part of the show. We should have moments where the band should cut out in 'Lay It On The Line' and we should just sing the harmonies. And we can do that in 'Fight The Good Fight'. We can do that in songs that we never did it originally. It's like another arrow in my quiver, it's another tool. I go, 'Okay.' There's things I wanna try and take advantage of. And they're all incredibly skilled. Fitzy can play keyboard parts, and Todd is as good a guitar player as he is a bass player. There's so many playing cards that are on the table now, I go, 'Oh…' Those people that are only listening on radio, I'm rubbing my hands in glee. That's what's happening. This is gonna be a really fun thing to get to play with over the next little while. And then those weeks that Gil was talking about, those dress rehearsals and stuff, man, I think there's gonna be an opportunity to build some things. And never mind the [stage] production that Gil's talking about and where this whole thing started, just musically, artistically, there's gonna be something here that's gonna be quite something."

Regarding how Fitz and Kerns were chosen to take part in the TRIUMPH 2026 tour, Gil said: "When I convinced Phil that this was something [that was gonna happen] — and at first I think he thought, 'Oh, this is fanciful. It's not gonna happen.' And then he realized, 'No, no, it's serious. It's gonna happen.' So when it came to filling the other spots in and stuff, and he said, like, 'Who do you want me to get?' And he was kind of going through this, this, this and this. And I said, 'It's really simple. We've gotta find some people that have great hearts.' All these guys we're talking about, they're really good players, but we want people that are gonna be good in the dressing room. So we wanna get good people. And immediately he goes right to Todd and Brent. And he says, 'That settles it. I got the guys.' And it's because of how they are as people, in addition to all their talent. They're very, very talented, as Rik said, tremendously talented people, but it's who they are. That's why they were picked. And Phil picked them."

Noting that Phil X already replaced Rik in TRIUMPH once before, host Eddie Trunk asked Emmett if he was "worried" that he would have to take a step back and give the spotlight to the younger musician on the upcoming tour. "No, no, no. The total opposite," Rik said. "If somebody had said, 'Well, it's just gonna be the original three guys,' I would've been far more reluctant than when they came to me and said, 'And guess who else we've got?' And in my mind I'm thinking, 'Phil X.' I definitely wanna give this guy so much rope that he hangs himself, because he's such an incredible player and he's a different kind of a player than I am. Tahat whole world of sort of the Eddie Van Halen, Randy Rhoads — he's got a virtuosity that it's not a part of my playing at all. But he has all this experience. He's been out on the road with BON JOVI and that. And I think, well, I think maybe he's gonna get an opportunity to stretch himself a little bit more and maybe have a little bit more leeway.

"TRIUMPH is a band that doesn't really have a musical leader," Emmett explained. "Gil's kind of the leader in certain ways. When we first started in the early days, Mike was kind of the guy that was the producer in the studio and was a leader in that respect. But I think all of these guys that we've got, and Phil in particular, they have leadership capability in certain ways, and I want Phil's star to shine. I'm happy to kind of take a backseat, move back upstage a little bit and let him have some room."

Formed in Mississauga in 1975, TRIUMPH rose from playing high school auditoriums and rock 'n' roll bars to selling out iconic arenas, from Toronto's famed Maple Leaf Gardens to Reunion Arena in Dallas, Texas. Their virtuosic musicianship, soaring vocals, and dazzling, high-production live shows helped define an era of arena rock. Blending hard rock power with progressive ambition, TRIUMPH has sold over 15 million albums worldwide and earned multiple gold and platinum certifications, building a global following through headline tours and landmark festival performances, including the 1983 US Festival before 500,000 fans. With hits like "Lay It on The Line", "Magic Power" and "Fight The Good Fight" — combined with pioneering stage productions featuring pyrotechnics, laser lighting, and theatrical flair — TRIUMPH became arena rock legends, securing a permanent place in Canadian and international rock history.

The band's return to the road follows a defining year honoring TRIUMPH's impact across generations. In June 2025, the band was celebrated with "Magic Power: All-Star Tribute To Triumph" (Round Hill Records, June 6, 2025),a 15-track tribute album featuring rock luminaries such as Phil X, Sebastian Bach, Slash, Nancy Wilson, Joey Belladonna, Dee Snider, Lawrence Gowan, Deen Castronovo, Alex Lifeson, Jeff Keith, Mickey Thomas and produced by the world-renowned Mike Clink (GUNS N' ROSES, MÖTLEY CRÜE, WHITESNAKE).

Further solidifying their celebrated status, TRIUMPH was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall Of Fame in October, a prestigious honor recognizing their enduring influence, masterful songwriting, and contributions to Canada's cultural legacy. This induction adds to their long list of accolades, which includes membership in the Canadian Music Industry Hall Of Fame (2007),the Canadian Music Hall Of Fame (2008),and Canada's Walk Of Fame (2019).

Emmett, who quit TRIUMPH — acrimoniously, in 1988 — over music and business disputes, went on to pursue a solo career, while TRIUMPH carried on with future BON JOVI guitarist Phil X for one more album, 1992's "Edge Of Excess", before calling it a day the following year.

Emmett was estranged, both personally and professionally, from the two other members of the legendary Canadian classic rock power trio for 18 years before they repaired their relationship.

After 20 years apart, Emmett, Levine and Moore played at the 2008 editions of the Sweden Rock Festival and Rocklahoma. A DVD of the historic Sweden performance was made available four years later.