They only need a little more time to wake up, wake up.
It’s one of the most famous family feuds in rock history: Noel and Liam Gallagher’s fractious relationship fueled their creative fire until it finally tore Oasis apart with one final bitter backstage fight in August 2009.
The Brothers Gallagher haven’t looked back since, both pursuing their own separate musical projects as fans beg them to stop looking back in anger, patch things up, and get back onstage.
What seemed for years like every Britpop fan’s wildest pipe dream rapidly turned into an all-but-assured reality over the weekend, however, ending late Sunday with Noel, 57, and Liam, 51, posting mysterious, identical messages to social media.
It began on Saturday afternoon with a Times of London report announcing out of nowhere that the boys “appear to have settled their differences” and have begun to plan two massive reunion concerts in London and Manchester next summer.
Unnamed “industry insiders” insisted to the newspaper that Noel and Liam’s truce would hold through their twin gigs at Wembley Stadium, which has reportedly been booked for what would be a record-breaking 10 nights, and Heaton Park.
Fans flocked to the Gallaghers’ social media to pepper them with the question: Was it true? Liam, the more online of the two brothers, teased one user who pointed out that “Heaton Park [is] terrible for concert venues,” replying only, “See you down the front ya big fanny kiss kiss x.”
The onetime Oasis frontman followed that up with a Sunday tweet that sent his audience into an even deeper tailspin: “I never did like that word FORMER.”
A few hours later, Noel posted an 11-second video to his X account, with the clip listing a date and time—8 a.m. this Tuesday—in Oasis’ iconic banner font. A minute later, the band’s official X account uploaded the same video. Four minutes later, Liam did, too. (In another sign of a coordinated operation, the banner was also projected by the rock band Blossoms onto the stage at the end of a Sunday night concert in Manchester.)
Whether the video is promising the opening of ticket sales or another announcement with further details on a potential reunion is unclear.
With Liam as frontman and Noel as lead guitarist and the group’s songwriting powerhouse, Oasis was formed in Manchester in 1991. Their relationship was tempestuous from the start. (In the 2016 documentary Supersonic, Liam said that he believed their acrimony “basically boils down to” the time he drunkenly urinated on Noel’s new stereo as a youth.) Noel quit the band for the first time in 1994, but rejoined soon after.
The band produced seven studio albums and headlined the Glastonbury Festival twice before it all fell apart in Paris while touring their album Dig Out Your Soul. After the fight led to them canceling their show that night, Noel released a statement announcing “with some sadness and great relief” that he’d quit, this time for good.
“People will write and say what they like, but I simply could not go on working with Liam a day longer,” he said.
Liam and the other remaining members of Oasis would go on to form the band Beady Eye, with Liam later splitting to go solo, while Noel would create the solo project Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds. Neither has yet achieved the same commercial or critical heights as Oasis.
In the years since 2009, the brothers have become almost as famous for sniping at one another online, snubbing each other during acceptance speeches, and generally hurling catty putdowns in the press.
“He’s rude, arrogant, intimidating and lazy,” Noel told Q magazine in April 2009. “He’s the angriest man you’ll ever meet. He’s like a man with a fork in a world of soup.” (Never one to let his older brother have the last word, Liam would post a video to X happily enjoying a bowl of soup with a fork—ten years later.)
But there’s often a sense of underlying fondness to all the rancor and resentment. As many times as he’s publicly called him a “horrible little man,” Liam has praised Noel as the greatest songwriter in the world. He admitted on X earlier this summer that he continues to save Noel a seat at every one of his shows, saying “you never know.” During at least one show this year, he’s appeared to physically gesture at feeling Noel’s absence on the stage.
And his older brother, for his part, told a reporter as recently as this month that he can’t belt out Oasis’ classic songs as well as Liam can. “When I would sing a song it would sound good, when he would sing it, it would sound great,” Noel said, according to NME.
Not coincidentally, 2025 will mark the 30th anniversary of Oasis’ bombshell second album, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, which launched them into the stratosphere and etched their names into music history.
It’s a long road to next summer, though, littered with plenty of tambourines and chairs to chuck at each other’s heads. Plans for a reunion have fallen through in years past, according to Liam. So it remains to be seen whether that shimmering light on the horizon is really an Oasis—or just another mirage.