Black Sabbath to Reunite for Ozzy Osbourne’s Final Performance

Six full years after his most recent concert, Ozzy Osbourne will make his final performance at the star-studded Back to the Beginning show on July 5 in Birmingham, UK’s Villa Park.

The show will also feature a set by the first full reunion of Black Sabbath‘s original lineup in almost 20 years.

Metallica, Slayer, Pantera, Gojira, Halestorm, Alice in Chains, Lamb of God, Anthrax and Mastodon will also perform at the show. The all-day event will also feature a super group of musicians including Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins, David Draiman of Disturmed, Guns N’ Roses‘ Duff McKagan and Slash, Anthrax’s Frank Bello and Scott Ian, Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit, former Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Jake E. Lee, Korn’s Jonathan Davis, former Judas Priest guitarist KK Downing, Lzzy Hale,, Mike Bordin of Faith No More), Rudy Sarzo,
Sammy Hagar, Sleep Token ii of Sleep Token, Ghost’s Papa V Perpetua, Wolfgang Van Halen, Zakk Wylde and music director Tom Morello, who promises this will be “the greatest heavy metal show ever.”

Tickets go on sale Friday, Feb. 14th at LiveNation’s UK site. All profits from the show will go to charities including Cure Parkinson’s, Birmingham Children’s Hospital and Acorn Children’s Hospice, a Children’s Hospice supported by Aston Villa.

Despite enduring a wave of medical setbacks that forced him to first postpone, then cancel his No More Tours 2 farewell tour after a Dec. 31, 2018 show in Los Angeles, Osbourne has been determined to say farewell to the stage on his own terms.

Black Sabbath played what was billed as their last-ever show on Feb. 4, 2017, but it was without original drummer Bill Ward, who backed out of their final tour over a contract dispute.

It will be the first time Ward plays a concert with Black Sabbath since the Sept. 4, 2005 tour-ending date of that year’s traveling Ozzfest festival. (He also played one song with them a month later at the UK Music Hall of Fame ceremony.)

In recent months, all four members of Black Sabbath have expressed their willingness to perform together one more time. “Ozzy was talking to me about, when he does his farewell concert – which he still wants to do – He’s dying to still get out there and play,” bassist Geezer Butler noted during a December 2024 conversation with Lifeminute. “And he suggested, at his very final concert, for the four of us to get up on stage and maybe do three or four songs together. And that would be it, finished.”

Despite the public and legal battle over being replaced for the band’s farewell tour, in July of 2024, Ward made it clear he was also up for a proper goodbye : “I’m in for playing some of everyone’s old favorites. Loved playing them then, I’d love to play them one last time.” Two months earlier, guitarist Tony Iommi said he was in, too: “Because it wasn’t Black Sabbath that finished it. It’s unfinished. If they wanted to do one more gig with Bill, I would jump at the chance.”