Foo Fighters played the Hollywood Bowl for the first time in the band's 32-year history on Saturday, Aug. 22, 2026, performing a sold-out, orchestra-backed show that doubled as a farewell tribute to Gustavo Dudamel's tenure with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The concert marked Dudamel's penultimate night as the orchestra's music director before his move to New York, though he is expected to return regularly to Los Angeles as a guest conductor.
Near the end of the night, Dave Grohl chugged from a bottle of champagne and told the crowd, "It's a celebration," a remark he extended beyond the band's own milestone to the significance of the evening as a whole.
The Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by Dudamel, reshaped several songs across the band's catalog. Horns gave "The Pretender" a sound Grohl and company likened to a lost James Bond theme, while lilting strings filled out "Razor," an acoustic deep cut from In Your Honor. The band also performed "Home" live for the first time since 2007. Introducing it, Grohl admitted, "Whenever we played that song, there's no way I could make it through without just bursting into tears." He later added, "I wish that we could do this every night for the rest of our lives, with all these amazing people."
A gospel choir joined the band for "The Sky Is a Neighborhood" and "Run," adding harmony to both tracks. The night also included an extended, emotional performance of "Aurora," dedicated to the band's late drummer Taylor Hawkins, as Foo Fighters have done regularly since his death. Looking out at the crowd, Grohl said, "He would have loved this."
The show closed with "Everlong," as the full orchestra and choir built to a crescendo while fireworks timed to the music lit up the Bowl. As Grohl sang the line "If anything could ever be this good again," the response from all 17,500 people in attendance suggested they'd already made up their minds.
Photo: Thomson200, CC0, http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en, via Wikimedia Commons
