Sir Rod Stewart is back in the gym three times a week, recording new music and already looking at tour dates for next year — five weeks after a coronary stent procedure forced him to abandon the remainder of his 2026 American tour.
The update came from his wife, Penny Lancaster, who spoke about his recovery on ITV’s Loose Women and described the 81-year-old as still carrying “this kind of voracious energy that he had and he still has at 81.” Lancaster, 55, said Stewart had returned to his ordinary daily routine, and that watching him was “incredible” and “so inspiring” for the couple’s two sons, Alastair, 22, and Aiden, 15.
“He’s still looking at the tour he’s got next year, he’s still recording new music,” she said.
For anyone who followed Stewart’s 2026, that is a markedly better bulletin than the run of announcements that preceded it.
A year of cancellations that ended in a stent
The stent was not a bolt from the blue so much as the end of a long, bad run. In May, Stewart canceled performances in Nevada, telling the Las Vegas Review-Journal he was “on vocal rest as I recover from a sinus infection” and sending “apologies to my family of fans.” Less than a month later he pulled his San Diego show after being diagnosed with a respiratory infection that had turned into laryngitis. In June, Ultimate Classic Rock reported that he needed an oxygen tank after nearly fainting onstage during a performance in Utah.
Then came August. He canceled an August 9 date in Cincinnati, citing “an unforeseen but minor medical procedure that required prompt attention.” Cleveland’s Rocket Arena announced its own cancellation shortly afterward, saying that “following a period of monitoring, doctors have advised Rod Stewart to rest for at least 48 hours.”
On August 11, a statement posted to Stewart’s official Instagram account confirmed what the postponements had been building toward: “Following further medical evaluation, Sir Rod Stewart has successfully undergone a routine coronary stent procedure. Doctors are pleased with his recovery, and Rod is doing very well and has returned to his normal daily activities.”
The same statement set out the cost. Stewart would take four weeks to “recuperate and regain full fitness,” which meant the remaining dates were gone — shows across Ohio, Illinois and Mexico, and a six-night residency at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Ultimate Classic Rock counted roughly 15 scheduled performances between the announcement and mid-September.
Stewart’s own message was shorter. “I’m already feeling better and very much on the mend,” he wrote. “I’m deeply disappointed to miss these shows and sorry to let my fans down.”
What his doctors were actually weighing
The most revealing detail in Lancaster’s account is not about Stewart’s heart but about his job. She has said the couple “did have to explain to the doctor what Rod’s performances are like” — that this is a man who spends nearly two hours running around a stage and gets through four costume changes a night “because he’s sweating through everything.”
That, she said, is why the medical advice was to cancel rather than to push on: the doctors were not assessing whether an 81-year-old could get through a normal day, but whether he could survive his own show. Earlier this month Lancaster had already told fans he would “come back stronger than ever,” noting he was “back at full speed in his day-to-day activities” while the tour was written off “because you know the risk factors involved.”
It is worth being precise about what has and has not been confirmed here. Every claim about Stewart’s condition has come from Stewart himself, his representatives, or his wife — not from speculation about how he looked on stage. His team has consistently described the procedure as routine and the recovery as going well, and nothing in Lancaster’s latest remarks contradicts that.
The word “farewell” is doing some work
There is one loose thread worth flagging. When the cancellations were announced, Billboard described the scrapped dates as belonging to Stewart’s North American farewell tour. ITV News and Ultimate Classic Rock simply called it his 2026 US tour. Stewart has spent several years being vague about what exactly he is retiring from — he has talked about stepping back from large-scale touring without ever announcing a final show.
His wife’s remarks do not settle it, but they point in a direction: a man planning next year’s dates and cutting new records is not obviously winding down. ITV reported in August that two further Colorado dates are already on the books for September 2027, which suggests the schedule survived the stent even if this year’s did not.
There was one other piece of news in Stewart’s August. In the same week the tour collapsed, he became a grandfather for the sixth time, when his daughter Ruby gave birth to a son named Levi.
