Chris Thile & Aoife O’Donovan Spread ‘Wassail!’ Cheer With 2026 Holiday Tour

Chris Thile and Aoife O’Donovan will spread holiday cheer together this December. The longtime collaborators announced a nine-show Wassail! tour featuring performances of seasonal favorites and newly written original songs.

The run begins at Groton Hill Music Center in Groton, Massachusetts on December 2. Thile and O’Donovan will then bring Wassail! to Rochester, New York; Great Barrington, Massachusetts; Santa Fe, New Mexico; Fort Collins, Colorado; Madison, Wisconsin; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Charleston, South Carolina and High Point, North Carolina through December 14.

Wassail! will see the pair perform fresh arrangements of holiday classics along with newly written and never-before-released original material. The shows will also feature stories from Thile and O’Donovan, whose extensive collaborative history includes their work together on The Goat Rodeo Sessions and its 2020 follow-up, Not Our First Goat Rodeo.

Thile and O’Donovan previously teamed for a Wassail holiday livestream in December 2020. The special featured the musicians and their families performing seasonal material, including a rendition of The Pogues’ “Fairytale of New York.” Watch Thile and O’Donovan perform the holiday favorite below:

“One of the very few things I love more than Christmas is making music with Aoife O’Donovan,” Thile wrote in announcing the tour.

Tickets are on sale now for seven of the nine shows. Local presales are underway for the Groton and Madison concerts, with general onsales beginning Friday, September 4 at 10 a.m. local time.