Sixteen years after their last performance together, the original members of popular Flemish girl group K3 have announced a series of concerts.

K3 was created in the late 1990s as a Flemish response to the UK’s Spice Girls and quickly became a household name in Belgium and the Netherlands.

The group’s breakthrough came in 1999 when they took part in the pre-selections for the Eurovision Song Contest in 1999 with ‘Heyah Mama’, which went on to dominate the charts. Over the years, K3 saw multiple lineup changes, but the original trio – Kathleen Aerts, Kristel Verbeke and Karen Damen – remains the most iconic.

Ticket sales for the trio’s reunion concerts began on Monday (24 March), attracting tens of thousands of fans to the queue and temporarily overloading ticketing sites.

Initially, five concerts were planned for Sportpaleis in Antwerp, Belgium, and four for Rotterdam Ahoy, in the Netherlands.

“What happened today, I would never have dared to dream”

Due to “enormous demand,” the former venue is now scheduled to host 14 nights in October, and the latter will host eight next April. In just six hours, a record-breaking 300,000 tickets were sold out.

Karen Damen comments: “I am completely overwhelmed. So many years later, we still feel that warm wave of love from the audience. This feels like coming home, and I can’t wait to share that feeling on stage.”

“What happened today, I would never have dared to dream,” Kathleen Aerts adds. “I am so looking forward to that first note, that first applause… What an adventure this is going to be!”

Kristel Verbeke says: “The reactions today really gave me goosebumps. We were asked ‘When are you going to do a reunion again?’ so often. The fact that we can experience this again now, the three of us, feels like we can give something back to our fans who have continued to follow and support us all these years.”

K3 is the latest successful reunion after comebacks from groups such as Oasis, S Club, Girls Aloud, N’Dubz, McFly, Sugababes and Busted. IQ looked back at the live industry’s most successful reunions to date.

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The UK music business has been abuzz with talk of an Oasis reunion over the past few days, with an announcement teased for 8am tomorrow.

Rumours of a reconciliation between Liam and Noel Gallagher have been frequent since the Britpop icons split following a backstage bust-up at France’s Rock en Seine in August 2009.

But this time there does appear to be substance to the speculation, first reported by The Times over the weekend, which cited industry insiders claiming the brothers had agreed to a run of open-air concerts in London and Manchester next summer.

Oasis would join a long line of music greats to put years of acrimony aside and reunite. Fellow Manchester legends The Stone Roses got back together in late 2011, having disbanded in 1996 – an almost identical period of estrangement to the Gallagher brothers.

The Roses’ three nights at Manchester’s Heaton Park in the summer of 2012 were reportedly the fastest-selling UK rock gigs of all time, with 220,000 tickets being sold in just 68 minutes. The band continued to perform until 2017, when they quietly went their separate ways once more.

The highest-grossing reunion tour to date is Guns N’ Roses‘ mammoth 2016-19 Not in This Lifetime… Tour, which featured the “classic” lineup of Axl Rose, Slash and Duff McKagan for the first time since 1993. Billboard data shows the Live Nation-promoted tour grossed US$584.2 million from 5,371,891 ticket sales, making it the third highest-grossing tour in history up to that point.

Where UK comebacks are concerned, Take That‘s 2005 return is still the gold standard

The Police‘s 2007/08 Reunion Tour, which followed their 1986 split, was a similarly monster success, taking the crown for the top-grossing tour of 2007 after generating $362m in total, according to Billboard Boxscore, while The Eagles‘ 1994-96 Hell Freezes Over Tour – their first jaunt in 14 years – garnered £152.9m.

Elsewhere, Fleetwood Mac‘s 2014-15 On with the Show, which saw Christine McVie rejoin the group for the first time since 1998, pulled in $199.2 according to Pollstar figures.

Other famous reunions include Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band (1999-2000), Black Sabbath (2012-14), Van Halen (2007) with original singer David Lee Roth, Iron Maiden, whose singer Bruce Dickinson rejoined in 1999 following a six-year absence, and Genesis (2021/22). In addition, Led Zeppelin played a one-off gig at The O2 in London in 2007, while Pink Floyd briefly regrouped for a performance at Live 8 in 2005.

Away from the rock realm, Jonas Brothers continue to do stellar business since returning from a six-year hiatus in 2019, while the Spice Girls have held two triumphant reunions – 2007/08’s The Return of the Spice Girls tour, which netted $70.1m from 45 arena concerts, and Spice World – 2019 UK Tour, which grossed $78.2m from just 13 stadium shows.

But in terms of lasting success, Take That‘s 2005 return remains the gold standard in their homeland. Their 2011 Progress Live tour with Robbie Williams, which saw all five original members perform together for the first time in 16 years, grossed $185.2m, with more than 1.8m tickets sold across 29 sold out stadium shows. Thirteen years on, it is still the biggest tour in UK history.

CAA’s Paul Franklin spoke to IQ about the roaring trade of reunion tours earlier this year.

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MarthaGunn (UK)

Agent: Steve Backman and Stefan Romer, Primary Talent

This five-piece band formed in Brighton and are named after a local heroine known as “the priestess of the bath.” Drawing from the bandmates’ various influences, MarthaGunn are mining an eclectic mix of the ’70s, indie- rock and classically tinged pop music.

A large proportion of the last year has been spent in a remote house in Wales, writing what will be the band’s next batch of releases and eventual first album. During this period they have also toured with AnnenMayKantereit in Germany and Austria, and Findlay and Blind Pilot in the UK, and have played a number of festivals including Kendal Calling, the Great Escape and Womad.

Arielle (US)

Agent: Phyllis Belezos, ITB

A music industry triple threat, Arielle could enjoy an impressive career solely either as a singer or songwriter or guitar player, but has combined all three of those gifts to create a unique artistry that defies genres and borders.

She opened for Eric Johnson on his three-month US tour last year, and has also supported and played with the likes of Vince Gill, Gregg Allman, Heart, Joan Jett, Country Joe McDonald, Eric Johnson, Paul Gilbert, Andy Timmons, and many more. Arielle has already made the cover of Guitar Player magazine and released the single ‘California’, which reached no3 on the CMT Pure Country chart, while her most recent release, ‘My Gypsy Heart’, debuted for eight weeks in the Billboard charts in 11 different categories.

Arielle was the guitar player for Avery in the TV show Nashville (also the city where she currently resides), and the purity of her four-octave voice draws comparison to Karen Carpenter and Eva Cassidy.

Morgane Ji (Fr)

Agent: Markus Rogue, Agents 4 Music

Morgane Ji is the perfect example of the successful blending of multiple ancestries with her African, Indian and Asian roots. As for her style and aesthetic approach, no one has managed to pigeonhole her; she strives to create the unexpected.

A pop-rock musician and practitioner of world electronic music, Reunion-born Morgane Ji is immediately recognisable thanks to her unique voice: protean, raspy, soft, animal-like. Her wide vocal range, melodic lines and shamanic cries offer audiences entertainment and excitement, as her performances feel like journeys through deep emotional and visual worlds.

Her album, Woman Soldier, was released last year to critical acclaim. She will be taking her unique talents to Colombia in March for two shows, and appearing at festivals in Russia, Switzerland, Spain and the Netherlands this summer.

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