2010 Tour shapes up

2010 North American tour continues to take shape, with the Irish rock icons unveiling a new stop in the Midwest and locking in a venue for a previously announced Montreal stop.

The tour—which, as previously reported, gets underway with an early June two-night stand in Southern California—now includes a June 27 engagement at Minneapolis’ TCF Bank Stadium, and the July 16 stop in Montreal will officially take place at that city’s Hippodrome stadium. The full itinerary is included below.

Tickets for the Minneapolis and Montreal performances go on sale Saturday (11/21), and ticket pre-sales for both—as well as for the tour’s June 30 stop in East Lansing, MI—(11/17). Details are posted at U2’s website.

In addition to its ever-growing North American run, U2 will embark on a new leg of European shows next year, beginning in August and extending through early October. Those dates can be found at U2’s website.

The 2010 shows—which also will include a late-summer/early fall European trek—will continue to feature the massive stage set the band has been using over this year, designed by long-time U2 associate Willie Williams in collaboration with architect Mark Fisher, an “in-the-round” design that seeks to afford every fan in attendance an unobstructed view of the band on stage.

In late October, TheWrap.com reported that the “170-ton, $40 million, four-pronged stage [is] so enormous, its overhead so costly,” that the band still hadn’t broken even on the tour, even after four months on the road in the US and elsewhere.

With shows so far this year in 44 cities, the band has already played before more than three million fans in 2009, according to a press release.

U2 is touring behind its 12th studio album, “No Line on the Horizon,” which surfaced in February. The set debuted at No. 1 in 30 countries, including the US, where it posted first-week sales of about 484,000 copies.