The creators of Welcome to Night Vale – one of the most downloaded podcasts in the world – have announced the return of their wildly popular live show to Europe and the U.K. in October 2017. Following last year’s sell-out tour for Ghost Stories, which included London’s Palladium theatre, Night Vale is set to return to the UK and Europe this Autumn, complete with a brand new script entitled All Hail.

Like the podcast, the live production of Night Vale brings stories of the surreal desert town of Night Vale to the stage as a fully-realized live show delivering rich, nuanced drama in the form of a community radio show hosted by Cecil Palmer(played by Cecil Baldwin).

With guest stars and a live musical All Hail appeals to uninitiated audiences as well as to dedicated fans of the podcast, who hang onto Cecil’s every word. This unique script works equally well as a standalone show and as a complement to the constantly evolving narrative of the podcast.

Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor created the Welcome to Night Vale podcast in 2012, having met through the anarchic, award-winning New York-based theatre group the New York Neo-Futurists. The show quickly became an underground success; in July 2013 it was downloaded 2.5 million times, making it No. 1 on iTunes, ahead of popular programs such as This American Life and Radiolab. That August it was downloaded 8.5 million times.

Instead of selling advertisements to fund the podcast, the Night Vale team decided to draw on their backgrounds in the performing arts to launch a touring live show, which has attracted capacity crowds to increasingly large venues in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and for the first time last year, Europe and the UK. Harper Perennial published the first Welcome to Night Vale novel, by Fink and Cranor, which debuted at #4 on The New York Times Fiction Bestseller list.