Dave Mustaine has explained how Steve Harris’ passion for football helped Megadeth land more Iron Maiden tour dates.
“They’ve been really great. When it started off, it was a little rough. Most tours are like that in the very beginning, but we had the friendship between myself and Steve [Harris] and Bruce [Dickinson] and the management,” Mustaine said.
“Rod Smallwood, I actually asked him to manage us for a period, so we’re all really close, and the tour has been very successful. We’re going into the South Pacific, into Australia and New Zealand with them.”
“We were talking about soccer yesterday, and I figured, ‘How the f*ck am I going to get some more Maiden dates down in South America? All right, I know Steve’s a sucker for football.’ So I go, ‘Hey, when’s the next football game?’… We started talking a little bit more about soccer, and by the time I walked away, I’m pretty sure we had the tour, at least in my mind.”
Mustaine talked about Megadeth’s recent tour with Iron Maiden and explained why it was a little rough for the band at the beginning of the tour.
Those comments arrive while both bands are in the middle of a shared run that stretches across several continents. Megadeth have been supporting Iron Maiden on the Run For Your Lives World Tour in 2026, and the pair are set to continue working together well into the final months of the year.
Megadeth were the special guests on the North American leg of the run, appearing on dates that began in late summer 2026. The same schedule confirms the two bands will move on to Oceania, with a show in Auckland, New Zealand, on November 7 and Australian dates in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane between November 11 and November 19.
The South Pacific stretch matches Mustaine’s own description of where Megadeth are heading next, and it also explains why he was already looking further ahead to South America. Iron Maiden’s 2026 schedule already includes Latin American and South American shows in San José, Costa Rica, on October 5, Bogotá, Colombia, on October 11, Quito, Ecuador, on October 14, Lima, Peru, on October 17, Buenos Aires, Argentina, on October 20 and 21, and Santiago, Chile, later in October. That existing footprint is precisely the kind of territory Mustaine was hoping to expand with a little football small talk.
The wider tour also fits a landmark period for Megadeth. The band released their self-titled 17th studio album on January 23, 2026, and it was billed as their final studio record. The album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in the United States and topped charts in 10 other countries.
Mustaine has been direct about what the album means for the band’s future. “This is also a perfect time for us to tell you that it’s our last studio album,” he said. With a farewell tour underway and shared bills with Iron Maiden continuing through the year, the friendship he describes with Harris and Dickinson is now part of the closing chapter of Megadeth’s live career.
