About Imagine Dragons

Imagine Dragons formed in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 2008, built around frontman Dan Reynolds and guitarist Wayne Sermon, with Ben McKee on bass and Daniel Platzman on drums. The early years were spent playing local clubs and lounges on and around the Strip and self-releasing a run of independent EPs, gradually gathering a following across the southwestern United States, where steady touring did more for the band than radio play in those first seasons.

The independent groundwork led to a major-label deal and a debut studio album that moved the band from a regional draw to an international name within a single release cycle. Las Vegas remains part of the band's story — a city built on large-scale live entertainment that suited a group writing big, room-filling songs from the start, and that appetite for scale shaped how they approached the stage long before they were filling arenas.

The debut album Night Visions (2012) delivered the breakthrough singles It's Time and Radioactive. Radioactive became one of the most commercially successful and long-charting rock songs of its era and earned a Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance, while Demons extended the album's reach across radio and streaming worldwide and carried the band onto festival bills across two continents.

The Evolve era widened the audience further still. Believer, Thunder, and Whatever It Takes became arena and stadium staples, picked up for sporting broadcasts and trailers, and later singles such as Natural and Enemy — the latter written for the animated series Arcane — kept the band a fixture on global charts well into the 2020s.

Each Imagine Dragons album shifts register rather than repeating the last. Records including Smoke + Mirrors, Evolve, Origins, and the two-part Mercury project move between anthemic rock, pop melody, and electronic production without abandoning the band's core songwriting voice, with the Mercury records in particular leaning into more personal, stripped-back writing.

A focus on large, memorable choruses and a percussive, dynamic arrangement runs through the catalogue. The sound is engineered for scale — designed to translate to arenas and open-air stages, where the drums and group vocals carry to the back row. Producers including Alex da Kid helped shape that wide, layered sound on the early hits, which is a large part of why the band reads so well in a live setting.

Imagine Dragons built much of their reputation on stage. Concerts are known for high energy, sustained audience participation, and a production that leans on lighting, video, and the band's drum-forward arrangements rather than constant theatrical effects, including the extended percussion sections, with the whole band gathered around a row of drums, that have become a signature of the live set.

Dan Reynolds is a physically expressive frontman who spends much of each show moving across the full width of the stage, and the band structures sets as a continuous arc that builds toward the biggest singles. A typical show reaches across the catalogue — early breakthroughs sit alongside recent releases — so that both long-time fans and newer listeners hear a familiar run of songs.

The band's 2026 calendar includes a headline appearance at Etihad Park on Yas Island, Abu Dhabi, closing the after-race programme of the Formula 1 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix weekend. Late-season Abu Dhabi offers dry, mild evenings — comfortable conditions for a large open-air concert on the island, where the Grand Prix weekend regularly pairs the race with major international live acts.

This page covers the band itself rather than a single show. For the confirmed date, venue layout, and ticket categories for the appearance, see the 2026 concert overview, or read the common ticket and entry questions before you book your place at Etihad Park.