Arashi announces 'ARAFES' at National Olympic Stadium & 5-Major Dome tour + new album

On June 30th, Arashi held an event titled, "Arashi no Wakuwaku Gakkou ~Mainichi ga Kagayaku 5-tsu no Jugyou~" at the Tokyo Dome, and made some surprise announcements which shook the entire venue with loud cheers from the audience of 45,000.

It was near the end of the event when Aiba Masaki began to speak, "Attention please. We have an announcement to make." Then, "ARAFES" showed up on the big screen, and it was announced that there would be a 2-day live concert at the National Olympic Stadium on September 21st and 22nd. 

"ARAFES" is a type of live concert in which the set list is based on the fans' requests. Ninomiya Kazunari stated, "We will perform 10 songs from our singles, 10 songs from our albums, and 10 songs from our coupling songs." This will be the 6th consecutive year for the group to hold a live concert at the venue.

As it was an unexpected announcement, the shouts of joy from the audience did not stop. However, it wasn't the only surprise. The second announcement was that Arashi's 12th album was set for release this fall. Aiba told the audience, "We just started working on it, so it's not even titled yet, but please look forward to it everyone."

Leader Ohno Satoshi followed up by saying, "We made an announcement about our album release, which means..." It was the cue to the announcement of their 5-major dome tour. There will be a total of 16 stages for the dome tour, and including the 2-days live at the National Olympic Stadium, 870,000 fans are expected to be attending their live concerts. The dome tour will kick off on November 8th, and will end on December 22nd.

Matsumoto Jun said to the audience, "It's great to see you guys excited. We will work hard on the preparation, so please look forward to it."

At the end of the event, Sakurai Sho shouted, "We'll see you again at the National Olympic Stadium!"

Source: Sanspo (1+2), Daily Sports Online