Post-punk Dubliners Fontaines D.C., whose Skinty Fia made being Irish in London a subject rather than a detail, bring Dopamine Chamber to The O2 arena.
Fontaines D.C. play The O2 arena on Friday 27 November 2026, ten years after five Dublin students who bonded over poetry became a band, touring Dopamine Chamber, the album that took them from clubs to arenas.
The band formed in 2014 at a Dublin music college: Grian Chatten singing, Carlos O’Connell and Conor Curley on guitars, Conor Deegan III on bass, Tom Coll on drums. Dogrel arrived in 2019, a record about Dublin at the moment the city was becoming unaffordable to the people in it. Three albums followed in five years, each one further from post-punk than the last, and Romance in 2024 took them from a band critics liked to a band that sells arenas.
The D.C. stands for Dublin City, and the Irishness has never been decorative: the accent stays, the subject stays, and the politics have got louder rather than quieter as the rooms have grown. Chatten and O’Connell published poetry pamphlets before the band had a record, and the writing has stayed the point: Skinty Fia in 2022 was about being Irish in London, a subject the room this show is in has a fair claim on.
Dopamine Chamber is the band’s fourth album, and Chalk open the show. Ten years on from a college band room in Dublin, the group now fills a 20,000-capacity arena in Greenwich.