Foo Fighters Bring the Take Cover Tour Into the Mohegan Sun Arena

Foo Fighters Bring the Take Cover Tour Into the Mohegan Sun Arena Sunday, Oct. 4, putting one of America’s biggest rock bands inside a 10,000-seat room during Mohegan Sun’s 30th birthday celebration.

That last part makes this particular stop stand out.

The Take Cover Tour has been built largely around stadiums and other enormous venues. Foo Fighters played Soldier Field in Chicago, Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, Nissan Stadium in Nashville, and Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas during the North American run.

Then comes Uncasville.

Instead of another football stadium, Dave Grohl and Foo Fighters move into the considerably more compact Mohegan Sun Arena for a 7:30 p.m. Sunday show with Gouge Away opening.

For fans accustomed to seeing Foo Fighters from the far end of a stadium, 10,000 seats qualify as relatively intimate.

Thirty Years of Foo Fighters Meets 30 Years of Mohegan Sun

There’s a nice bit of symmetry surrounding the concert.

Foo Fighters’ first album arrived in 1995.

Mohegan Sun opened the following year, in 1996.

Three decades later, their histories intersect during the resort’s 30th birthday celebration.

Mohegan Sun has built two weekends of major concerts around the anniversary, beginning with Alanis Morissette on Oct. 2. Foo Fighters take the Arena Sunday night, followed the next weekend by John Mayer, Lainey Wilson and DJ Cassidy’s Pass The Mic Live!

That places Foo Fighters near the beginning of what amounts to a 10-day birthday party for the resort.

Foo Fighters Started With One Foo Fighter

There wasn’t really a band at first.

After Nirvana ended following Kurt Cobain’s death in 1994, drummer Dave Grohl entered a Seattle studio and recorded a collection of songs he had written largely on his own.

Grohl played nearly everything himself on the recordings.

Rather than initially releasing the music under his own name, he called the project Foo Fighters, borrowing a World War II-era term used by Allied pilots for unexplained objects they reported seeing in the sky.

The self-titled Foo Fighters arrived in 1995.

A touring band followed, and what began as Grohl’s personal studio project gradually became one of the most successful rock bands of the following three decades.

Then Came The Colour and the Shape

If the first album established Foo Fighters, 1997’s The Colour and the Shape helped define what the band would become.

It produced “Monkey Wrench,” “My Hero” and “Everlong.”

Those songs remain fundamental to the band’s identity nearly 30 years later.

“Everlong” in particular has become something close to the emotional center of a Foo Fighters concert, while “My Hero” grew from an alternative-rock single into an arena-sized communal singalong.

More records followed, and so did more songs that became permanent parts of rock radio: “Learn to Fly,” “All My Life,” “Times Like These,” “Best of You,” “The Pretender,” “Walk” and “These Days.”

Mohegan Sun describes a catalog that now spans 12 albums and 15 Grammy Awards.

The Take Cover Tour Has a New Album Behind It

This isn’t simply a greatest-hits tour.

Foo Fighters released Your Favorite Toy in 2026, giving the Take Cover Tour new material to put beside songs that have been filling arenas for decades.

Mohegan Sun highlights the title track along with “Caught in the Echo,” “Of All People” and “Asking for a Friend” among the new record’s songs.

That creates one of the interesting tensions in a Foo Fighters show this far into the band’s career.

There are enough established songs to fill an entire concert without touching anything recent. But Foo Fighters have continued making records rather than becoming a touring legacy act built solely around the 1990s and 2000s.

The current show has to find room for both.

What Are They Playing on This Tour?

A setlist is never guaranteed, and Foo Fighters can change songs from night to night.

But the band’s recent Sept. 24 performance in Louisville offers a useful picture of what the 2026 show currently looks like.

That performance included “All My Life,” “The Pretender,” “Times Like These,” “My Hero,” “Learn to Fly,” “These Days,” “Walk,” “This Is a Call,” “No Son of Mine,” “Big Me,” “Monkey Wrench,” “Breakout,” “Aurora,” “Best of You,” “Exhausted” and “Everlong.”

“Aurora” was dedicated to Taylor Hawkins.

That remains one of the unavoidable emotional threads running through the current era of Foo Fighters.

The Band After Taylor Hawkins

Hawkins joined Foo Fighters in 1997 and spent roughly a quarter-century behind the drum kit.

His death in Colombia in March 2022 at age 50 fundamentally changed the band.

Foo Fighters eventually decided to continue, releasing the deeply personal But Here We Are in 2023. The album confronted grief and loss directly, arriving after both Hawkins’ death and the death of Grohl’s mother, Virginia.

Songs such as “Rescued,” “Under You” and the 10-minute “The Teacher” came from that period.

The decision to continue meant Foo Fighters had to figure out what the band was without one of its most recognizable members.

Hawkins hasn’t disappeared from the concerts that followed. “Aurora,” one of his favorite Foo Fighters songs, has frequently served as a live remembrance.

Who Is in Foo Fighters Now?

The group onstage in 2026 represents several different eras of Foo Fighters.

Grohl remains at the center on vocals and guitar, joined by longtime members Nate Mendel on bass, Pat Smear and Chris Shiflett on guitar, and Rami Jaffee on keyboards.

That gives the current lineup connections stretching almost all the way back through the band’s history.

Smear’s connection with Grohl goes back even further: he toured with Nirvana as a second guitarist during the band’s final period.

The result is a live band capable of moving from the comparatively lean attack of early Foo Fighters material into the much larger arrangements the group developed as its stages grew from clubs to arenas and stadiums.

Gouge Away Opens the Night

The support act isn’t an arbitrary addition.

Gouge Away, a Florida hardcore and post-hardcore band, is the confirmed special guest for the Mohegan Sun date.

The band’s name itself is a nod toward the Pixies song “Gouge Away,” which gives the group an immediate connection to the alternative-rock lineage that preceded Foo Fighters.

Their music is considerably more abrasive than much of the headliner’s catalog, drawing on hardcore punk, noise rock and post-hardcore.

For anyone planning to arrive only in time for Foo Fighters, they’re worth factoring into the evening. This isn’t a local warm-up act added to fill time; Gouge Away is officially part of the Take Cover Tour stop.

The Floor Has No Seats

There’s another detail worth knowing before buying a ticket.

The Mohegan Sun Arena floor is standing general admission for this concert. There will be no chairs on the floor.

That creates two distinctly different ways to experience the show.

A floor ticket means standing in the general-admission crowd directly in front of the stage.

Anyone who needs or prefers an assigned seat should choose one of the Arena’s seated sections rather than assuming a floor ticket comes with a chair.

The distinction is especially important for a concert likely to run for hours once the opening act and changeover are included.

An Arena Show in the Middle of an Auto-Show Weekend

Foo Fighters aren’t the only major attraction bringing people to Mohegan Sun Sunday.

The Connecticut International Auto Show is running from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. inside the Earth Expo Center that day, with new cars, trucks, SUVs, EVs, exotics, classics and the new Overland Connecticut exhibit.

Then Foo Fighters begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Arena.

The events require separate admission, but the schedule makes an all-day Mohegan Sun visit possible: cars during the afternoon and Foo Fighters at night.

It also means the property should be particularly busy.

Mohegan Sun offers free self-parking, but anyone heading specifically to the concert should allow extra time to park, move through the resort and complete Arena security screening.

Three Decades Later, They’re Still Playing Like a Rock Band

There are bands whose anniversaries eventually become the entire point of the show.

Foo Fighters have resisted that transition.

The catalog is certainly large enough for nostalgia. “This Is a Call” dates to 1995. “Everlong” and “My Hero” are approaching 30. “Learn to Fly” comes from 1999. Even “The Pretender” is nearly two decades old.

But those songs now sit beside music made after deaths, lineup changes and a period when the band’s future wasn’t certain.

That makes the Take Cover Tour something more interesting than a victory lap.

It’s a band with three decades behind it still trying to figure out what comes next.

And on Oct. 4, they’re putting all of that into a room much smaller than many of the stadiums they’ve been playing.

More information is available at the Event Website link below. To purchase tickets, click the Event Ticketing link below.

Details

Event: Foo Fighters — Take Cover Tour 2026
Date: Sunday, Oct. 4, 2026
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Venue: Mohegan Sun Arena
Address: 1 Mohegan Sun Boulevard, Uncasville, CT 06382
Special Guest: Gouge Away
Tour: Take Cover Tour 2026
Venue Capacity: Approximately 10,000
Floor: Standing general admission; no chairs are provided on the floor
Event Context: Part of Mohegan Sun’s 30th Birthday Celebration
Parking: Free self-parking is available in Mohegan Sun’s garages and Winter Lot
Reserved Parking: Riverview Reserved Parking can be purchased separately
Bag Policy: Backpacks, string bags, diaper bags, shopping bags, messenger bags, briefcases and rolling-style bags are prohibited inside the Arena
Ticketing: Ticketmaster

 

 

Featured image is an artistic representation inspired by the event and may not depict the actual people, location, or activities shown.