Foo Fighters play intimate New York show after turbulent comeback year

Foo Fighters turned Irving Plaza into a tight, controlled burst of rock theater on Thursday night, selling a secret show to roughly 1,000 fans and using the club setting to reset the band’s public story. The same group that can fill Citi Field was suddenly close enough to count faces, a contrast sharpened by the $30 ticket price and a two-per-person limit that made the room feel scarce before the first note.

That scarcity was the point. Irving Plaza holds up to 1,100 people, a fraction of Citi Field’s 41,922-seat scale, and the band also announced a second surprise stop at Starland Ballroom in New Jersey, extending the sense that Foo Fighters were staging a pop-up run rather than a conventional tour date. Fans camped overnight or lined up early, many in vintage merchandise, as the club drew the kind of fevered anticipation that giant arenas often flatten.

The move carried extra weight after a difficult stretch for the band. Their July 17, 2024 concert at Citi Field was cut short by severe weather, with fans saying the group made it through 13 songs before evacuation. Since then, Dave Grohl publicly said in September 2024 that he had fathered a daughter outside his marriage, and in 2025 Foo Fighters replaced drummer Josh Freese with Ilan Rubin. The Irving Plaza show functioned as more than a nostalgia trip; it looked like a deliberate attempt to reclaim momentum on their own terms.

That momentum now includes new music. Billboard and the band’s official store identify Your Favorite Toy as Foo Fighters’ 12th studio album, released just a week earlier, with songs such as Spit Shine and My Favorite Toy in the set. Grohl opened the night by promising a mix of new songs and old-school material, and the band delivered exactly that.

The 8:06 p.m. start gave way to a 25-song performance that threaded together staples like All My Life, Times Like These, Monkey Wrench and My Hero with newer material from the album, including Spit Shine and My Favorite Toy. Additional reporting said the show included at least one live debut from the record, underscoring how rare it remains to see a stadium act operate at club scale.

Foo Fighters have played Irving Plaza before, including a similar underplay in 2014, but this version landed differently. After weather, turnover and public scrutiny, the band used a 1,000-seat room to project something harder to manufacture in a stadium: proximity, urgency and the sense that a major rock act can still surprise its own audience.