---
title: Ian Gillan's Medical Emergency Halts Deep Purple's UK Tour, Three Months After Ritchie Blackmore Rejoined Him on Stage
description: Deep Purple have postponed their UK and European tour after Ian Gillan, 81, needed urgent hospital care in Leipzig. What he said and what comes next.
author: Dr Marina Nani (Editor-in-Chief)
date: 2026-11-03T12:01:39.957Z
updated: 2026-11-03T12:01:39.969Z
canonical: https://thequantumoflight.com/article/ian-gillan-deep-purple-uk-tour-postponed
image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/pexels-167605.webp
categories: Music 
content_type: News
region: Germany, England
publication: The Quantum of Light
about:
  - type: Person
    name: Ian Gillan
    description: English singer and lyricist, lead singer of Deep Purple, born in Chiswick, west London, in 1945.
    url: https://www.gillan.com/
    jobTitle: Lead singer, Deep Purple
---

Deep Purple have postponed the rest of their European and UK tour after Ian Gillan, the singer who first joined the band in 1969, needed urgent hospital treatment in Leipzig. The band called off its concert at the QI Arena in Leipzig on Saturday 31st October, hours before the show, and the next night's concert at the Sporthalle in Hamburg followed. On Monday 2nd November Gillan wrote to fans himself to say every remaining date would be postponed until further notice.

## Ian Gillan's Statement to Fans

Gillan thanked fans for their messages and said he had suffered 'a medical problem whilst in Leipzig' that needed urgent attention at the hospital. He had hoped his doctors would let him finish the tour, he wrote, but 'there are very serious risks involved' in carrying on. The decision came on the advice of his medical team and management. He did not say what the problem was, and Deep Purple have given no further details.

The postponement covers four more German concerts, starting in Dortmund on 3rd November and continuing in Berlin, Frankfurt and Nuremberg, and the whole UK leg: Newcastle, Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester and a closing night in London on 24th November. No new dates have been announced. If you hold tickets, your ticket agent or the venue will publish the latest information.

## Deep Purple's Splat! Year

The tour was the live half of Splat!, the band's 2026 album, released on 3rd July through earMUSIC. It is their sixth record with the producer Bob Ezrin, who has worked on every Deep Purple album since Now What?! in 2013. The Splat! world tour opened in Europe in the early summer with shows in Finland, Norway, France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland and Italy, crossed North America in August and returned to Europe in the autumn. Gillan was on stage at the Unipol Forum in Assago, outside Milan, on 17th October, two weeks before Leipzig.

## Ritchie Blackmore's Return at Jones Beach

The night most fans will remember from 2026 came on 12th August at the Jones Beach Theater in Wantagh, New York. Ritchie Blackmore, the guitarist who co-founded Deep Purple in 1968 and walked out during the 1993 tour, joined the band for 'Smoke on the Water' and played with them for the first time in 33 years. Blackmore, also 81, had said beforehand that he had not played rock music in 25 years. Afterwards he said the night might be the last time the old friends saw each other. Gillan later said the bad feeling between them had been settled years earlier, and that the cameo had been coming for some time.

The encore put Gillan, the bassist Roger Glover and the drummer Ian Paice on one stage with Blackmore again: four of the five men who recorded Machine Head in 1972. The fifth, the keyboard player Jon Lord, died in 2012.

## Ian Gillan From Episode Six to Deep Purple in Rock

Gillan was born on 19th August 1945 in Chiswick, west London. He sang with the Javelins and then Episode Six, where he worked alongside Roger Glover. In 1969 the two of them replaced Rod Evans and Nick Simper in Deep Purple, and the line-up fans call Mark II went on to make Deep Purple in Rock (1970), Fireball (1971) and Machine Head (1972). As the band's lyricist, Gillan put words to 'Smoke on the Water', 'Highway Star' and 'Child in Time'.

In 1970, between Deep Purple records, he sang the role of Jesus on the original album of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's Jesus Christ Superstar. He left Deep Purple in 1973, exhausted by relentless recording and touring, and led the Ian Gillan Band and then Gillan through the late 1970s and early 1980s. He sang on Black Sabbath's Born Again in 1983 before the Mark II line-up reformed for Perfect Strangers in 1984. He left again in 1989, returned in 1992 and has fronted the band ever since. Deep Purple entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016.

## Ian Gillan's Eyesight and Talk of Retirement

Gillan has spoken openly about his health. In an interview with Uncut in November 2025 he said he had only 30 per cent of his vision, that it would not improve, and that he would stop performing if he lost his energy. In July 2026 he told The Independent that he had never said he was close to retiring, only that he would retire when he no longer had the strength. Roger Glover has said the band will not stage a farewell tour or a final concert.

If you want to hear the voice behind this week's news, start with 'Child in Time' on Deep Purple in Rock, move to Gillan's 'Gethsemane' from the 1970 Jesus Christ Superstar album, and finish with Splat!, the record he was touring this autumn.