From Europe to Australia: Culture Wars Gear Up For Their Biggest Headline Tour Yet

US alt stars Culture Wars will bring their 2026 World Tour – Leg Four to Australia this December, for four exclusive shows. Culture Wars were last in Australia in late 2024 playing huge shows opening for the likes of Lany and Amy Shark across the country. The wait for fans will finally be over when they bring their headline shows to our shores this summer. Front man Alex Dugan talks to Rob Lyon about the tour.

Great to be talking to you. You must be getting pretty excited, December doesn’t feel that far away now for your first Australian headline tour?
It sneaks up on you. You’re like, “Oh, it’s so far away, I’m excited,” and then all of a sudden it happens. We waited a similar amount of time for Mexico, and that was a very big show for us as well. I’m learning to appreciate time instead of just trying to rush to the next thing and not let it slip by.

Touring with Amy Shark and LANY in 2024 must have been a really good introduction to touring Australia?
Yeah, it was great. For Amy, that was the thing we had planned. Then LANY’s opener had a family emergency, and we were just with them in Asia, so they’re like, “Hey, the tour starts in four days, can you do it?” Twice, in the same two weeks. They overlapped, so that was kind of nuts, but it was great. I think we lucked out in that regard. And as I say a lot, any excuse to be in Australia is fine with me.

Even if it’s four shows in five days or something like that?
Yeah, that sounds right. We’re used to grinding it out, but the worst one was Melbourne, then Perth, then Adelaide, three days in a row. That was the weird one.

How do you prepare for that kind of grind?
We’ve been doing it on our European tour, which is literally back to back to back. You just get your Qantas number ready and get to the airport early. Honestly, it’s all discipline, being like, “It’d be fun to go out and have a good time after the show, but we can’t.” We’re here to work, to do the shows, to talk to people and meet fans. You’ve got to be a little strict, but the end result is always positive. I can drink at home.

How’s the European tour going so far?
It’s cool. It feels like we’ve been doing it forever, but it really started in May, doing the US leg, and now Europe. Most of these places… like, we’ve only played London once, and now we’re doing nineteen cities over here. The majority of these shows are selling out fully. We were sold out in Stockholm the other day, and sold out in Berlin. We’ve never been here, and I don’t know anybody. It’s really crazy, we spent years just trying to be a band that could sell tickets in Austin, and now seemingly overnight we can do it everywhere. It’s very different. We keep describing it as imposter syndrome, because we’re just like, “How did y’all get here? How did this happen?” But it’s great.

When you reflect on it, does it blow you away how far and wide your music has gone now?
I don’t know how much reflecting we’ve had time to do, to be honest. Sometimes it’s just like, “That was nuts.” We’ve been doing these bigger shows, we did Le Trabendo in Paris, which is a pretty decent sized room, not a small club, and we did The Garage in London. These bigger rooms, and everyone’s just kind of nuts. We get done with it and we’re like, “What just happened?” We’re still wrapping our heads around it.

Are you pretty much playing the debut album in full on tour now that it’s out?
Yeah, pretty much. Everything gets a play. We’ve even got a song that didn’t make the album that we still play. We’re very much happy to finally be playing some of these things for people, because these are songs that obviously didn’t exist the last time we were touring. Going to a city like Madrid and everyone already knows the words to every album track that’s only been out for two months. It’s crazy. I didn’t even think anyone knew who we were, and here we are. It’s fun.

Do you feel a little less pressure now that the debut album is out?
It all just turns into, “When’s the next one?” Not from fans, fans are pretty chill, but just in general. The music business now is constant new content: gimme, gimme, gimme. It’s this level of unsatisfaction, like you just put the coin in and pull, and you’re supposed to keep putting coins in and pulling. I don’t think that’s how art’s made. So the pressure’s off in some regards and on in others. But for us, we just stay on our ground, do it by ourselves, and continue that path of being music and art first.

Was it difficult with your debut to try and make an album that best represents where the band is now, defining your sound, especially given you already had a string of singles out?
It can be tough for sure. That’s the pressure of, “Alright, this is your first album, it’s got to be right.” But I personally want that vibe with everything. We did a tour with Maroon 5 and they were like, “We had to tour our first album for three years.” So we were like, alright, we need to love what we’re doing with this album if we’re going to play it for three years, because when you only have one album, you can’t skip a song in the set. You’ve got to play everything.

Have you been blown away by the reaction to the album so far, reviews, fan reaction, all of that?
Yeah, my main thing is seeing the data on Apple and Spotify, seeing that people are listening to the whole thing repetitively, not just coming back for a song or two. That’s the part where I’m like, alright, cool, it’s something people can actually enjoy as a whole. It’s great to feel that both in person and online, seeing people really enjoying all of it.

Have these songs started to take on their own direction live, evolving compared to how they were recorded on the album?
Yeah. Some of the songs… like Tokyo, we’ve realised it’s everyone’s secret favourite, both in the band and with fans. Every time someone asks us what our favourite song on the album is, they’re essentially testing us to see if we’ll say Tokyo. So that’s interesting.

You mentioned earlier about having to constantly feed the cycle of new content. Has the creativity and writing process continued, or do you have to be at a complete stop before you can even contemplate what the follow‑up looks like?
I would think off the road. We have some pretty big gaps built in inherently, for a lot of reasons, but to me, off the road is where it happens. Right now, when we’re on the road, everything’s new and exciting, and every time we get to a new city we want to go explore it, so there’s just no time. I also think what we want on the second album is going to have to be completely different from what we did for the first. If we got together and said, “Alright, that worked, let’s do it again,” we’re screwed. The bands that succeed long‑term are the ones that challenge themselves each time and don’t go through the motions. That requires having grounded feet in order to be pushed.

What do you look forward to most about returning to Australia?
My wife’s Australian, so I’m going to turn it into a long summer family vacation kind of thing, so we’ll be out there through June. I’m most excited about just getting back, I love being there. If it was up to me and not my wife, I probably would try to move us back already. I enjoy being there. I like being calm. In America, I always feel like I’ve got to look over my shoulder and stuff like that, so it’s nice to just feel calm and leave the door unlocked.

Interview By Rob Lyon

Catch Culture Wars on the following dates, tickets from Live Nation…