J. Cole did not walk out from the wings at Dublin’s 3Arena on Thursday, October 22. He began his opening number high in the seating, then worked his way down through the crowd to the floor, shaking hands as he went, before he ever reached the stage. It was the only Irish date of The Fall-Off Tour, and the ninth of 20 shows on its European and UK leg.
The entrance is now a fixture of this run. At the first of his two nights at The O2 in London on October 19, Cole also started “39 Intro” up in the stands. Dublin got the same treatment three days later, with the tour arriving in Ireland directly from those London dates.
What the Dublin set looked like
A gig review from the night describes a career-spanning set built for both longtime mixtape listeners and casual fans. “A Tale of 2 Citiez” and “Fire Squad” came early and hard. “In the Morning”, “Work Out” and “Can’t Get Enough” turned into arena singalongs. Cole also ran through his guest verses on “a lot”, the 21 Savage single, and “The London”, the Young Thug and Travis Scott track, before slowing things down for “Love Yourz”. He closed with “Power Trip” and “No Role Modelz”.
The production leans on light more than props. A large lighting grid hung across the arena roof, moving from dim overhead beams on the reflective songs to bright, pulsing patterns on the bigger hits.
Not everything about the night is on record yet. No full Dublin setlist had been published by the weekend, and no support act for Ireland had been confirmed. In London, Dreamville rapper Mick Jenkins opened on October 19, and that show leaned heavily on the new album, with “Poor Thang”, “WHO TF IZ U” and “Johnny P’s Caddy” played before the older catalog.
Why this tour matters for Cole
The run supports The Fall Off, released on February 6, 2026 through Cole World, Inc. under exclusive license to Interscope Records. It is a two-disc album that looks at Cole at 29 and at 39, and at his roots in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Live Nation’s tour announcement is dated February 17, 11 days after the album came out, with presales opening that same day.
The scale is the story. This is Cole’s first solo headline tour in five years, following The Off-Season Tour in 2021, and his first full global run since the 4 Your Eyez Only World Tour in 2017. That 2017 trip was also the last time he played 3Arena, on October 18 of that year. He returned to Dublin in 2018 to headline the Longitude festival, but Thursday’s show was his first Dublin arena date in nine years.
The North American leg ran through the summer and finished with a homecoming at the Crown Coliseum in Fayetteville on September 23. Europe began on October 7 at Berlin’s Uber Arena.
The leg by the numbers
Counting from Berlin, Dublin was show nine of 20. Birmingham’s Utilita Arena was scheduled for Sunday, October 25, and Glasgow’s OVO Hydro hosts show 11 on Monday night, October 26. Once Glasgow is done, Cole will be past the halfway mark of the European leg, with nine dates left in 17 days before the final European stop in Oslo on November 12. That works out to a show roughly every other night, including the two back-to-back nights at Co-op Live in Manchester.
The remaining European dates are:
- October 28 and 29: Manchester, Co-op Live
- October 31: Nottingham, Motorpoint Arena
- November 2: London, The O2 (his third night there on this leg)
- November 5: Paris, Accor Arena
- November 8: Hamburg, Barclays Arena
- November 9: Copenhagen, Royal Arena
- November 11: Stockholm, Avicii Arena
- November 12: Oslo, Unity Arena
After Europe the tour heads south. Brisbane is first on November 25, followed by Melbourne, Sydney and Auckland, where the Oceania leg ends on December 5. The tour then finishes on Saturday, December 12 with a stadium show at FNB Stadium in Johannesburg, South Africa. Live Nation says that date marks Cole’s first return to the region in 10 years. Before any of that, the next fans to see the walk down from the seats will be in Glasgow on Monday night.
Further reading
Image: Bryan Horowitz, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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