My Chemical Romance kicked off a five-night Hollywood Bowl residency on Wednesday night, celebrating the 20th anniversary of The Black Parade with a rain-soaked, pyro-heavy spectacle that organizers say no band has pulled off at the historic venue before. The opening show ran 45 minutes late because of the weather, but once it started, the band tore through the entire album in order, complete with fireworks, costumed performers and a theatrical staging of the record's dystopian storyline.
The band’s current Los Angeles stand is being billed as a milestone run, with Hollywood Bowl describing the band as the first act to ever perform five shows there. According to the venue, the engagement's final two dates, Oct. 30 and 31, will mark the band's fourth and fifth performances at the Bowl, and are also being called the first residency of that length in the venue's history, a distinction echoed by Rolling Stone. A report from KTLA, published Oct. 22, described the engagement as a five-night run, listing Oct. 23, 24, 30 and 31 as the remaining dates.
A Theatrical Night Built Around The Black Parade
Rolling Stone's review of the opening night described a production that leaned hard into the album's concept, with the set comprising all of The Black Parade performed start to finish. The staging folded in the record's dystopian narrative, centered on the fictional nation of DRAAG and its Grand Immortal Dictator character, alongside dancing soldiers, cheerleaders and a staged shooting of that character, all set against pyro and fireworks that punctuated the music throughout the night, the outlet reported.
Guests on the Oct. 30 show are scheduled to include The Used, while Thrice is set to open the Halloween-night performance, according to Consequence. Timed to the residency, a 20th-anniversary edition of The Black Parade is set for release this Friday, Oct. 23, through Reprise, per the same Rolling Stone account.
Gerard Way Teases What Could Come Next
During a recent San Antonio show, frontman Gerard Way told the crowd the band hopes to return to the studio, saying, “You guys deserve another record, and we'd love to make it,” according to Consequence. Rolling Stone reports that the band plans on recording a new album, which would be its first LP in more than 16 years. My Chemical Romance has released just one new song since reuniting in 2019, 2022's “The Foundations of Decay,” the outlet noted, and the band's most recent full studio album dates back to 2010, according to the Los Angeles Times.
A Year of Record-Setting Crowds
The Hollywood Bowl dates cap a run of massive numbers for the band. Its “Long Live: The Black Parade” tour sold more than 450,000 tickets across just 10 North American cities, KTLA reported. Pollstar put even sharper figures on the year, reporting that the band's 11 shows in 2025 grossed a total of $88,552,117 off 448,045 tickets, according to Pollstar. That total included a sold-out two-night stand at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles that alone grossed $14,965,124, per the same report — the band's first-ever stadium tour, as the Los Angeles Times noted in its review of those shows. The band previously played five nights at Inglewood's Kia Forum back in 2022, the Times reported, making the current Bowl residency the latest entry in a string of increasingly ambitious Los Angeles engagements.
Pollstar also reported that My Chemical Romance's 2026 schedule includes stops in South America, Mexico, Asia, Europe and the United Kingdom before the band returns to the United States. After the Hollywood Bowl residency wraps, the band is set to close out 2026 with Southeast Asian shows, leaving the studio talk as something fans will have to wait on even after the Halloween-weekend shows close out this chapter of the celebration.
