IRON MAIDEN are confirmed to headline the Main Stage of Hungary's Sziget Festival on "Zero Day", Tuesday, August 12th.

A message at the festival website reads:

"Iron Maiden are currently on a worldwide tour which has just started in Mumbai in India. Among many stadium and festival performances around the planet we are delighted to announce that the band will perform in Budapest on the Main stage of Sziget festival on Zero day, Tuesday, August 12th.

To tie in with forthcoming 2008 release on DVD of the classic Live After Death concert video (full details available on www.ironmaiden.com) this tour, aptly entitled the Somewhere Back In Time - World Tour '08, will revisit the band’s incredible history by focusing almost entirely on the 80’s in both choice of songs played and the stage set, which will be based around the legendary Egyptian Production of the 1984-85 Powerslave Tour. This will arguably be the most elaborate and spectacular show the band have ever presented, and will include some key elements of their Somewhere In Time tour of 1986/7, such as the Cyborg Eddie.

Says Steve Harris, "Budapest is a very beautiful city and we always enjoy our visits there, which go right back to the first ever tours we did. It’s also tremendous to be able to use the profile of the Live After Death DVD to do what is effectively an 80’s show. It will be enormous fun and changing the approach to the songs we play tour by tour keeps it fresh and interesting for both the band and the fans alike. l think Powerslav’ was an incredible show with the Egyptian theme and I’m looking forward to seeing it all again myself.”

“Maiden Mania” is currently gripping countries round the world as tickets for the 2008 World Tour fly out of the box offices everywhere. In San Paolo the 42,000 cap Palmeiras Stadium sold out in just a week; Mexico city’s 22,000 cap Sports Arena sold out in a record 4 days leading to the show being moved to the 48,000 Foro Sol Stadium; in Bogota, where the onsale was the biggest first day sales of any music event ever in Colombia, the Simon Bolivar Stadium sold out the 30,000 original capacity in 10 days and this has now been extended to 50,000; 14,000 cap arenas in Sydney and Melbourne sold out in less than half and hour; 25,000 fans in both Chile and Costa Rica have already snapped up all available tickets with the promoter asking the venues if he can get more fans in to see the show: shows in 14,000 cap arenas in LA, New York, Toronto already sold out weeks in advance; and in the Summer, when Maiden take the show round Europe, 125,000 tickets were sold in just over 2 hours last November for three stadium shows in Sweden and Finland. All in all it promises to be a momentous tour and year for Maiden, and a tour which will finish at Assen!!

The Somewhere Back In Time World Tour is in three sections, the travel for the first being by very unique means with the group customising a Boeing 757 aircraft, which will carry the band, their crew and over 12 tons of equipment from city to city. This first section of the tour opens in Mumbai India on Feb 1st, continuing through Australia and Japan before arriving in Los Angeles. The entourage then fly to Mexico then onto Maiden’s first ever visits to Costa Rica and Columbia, then on to Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Puerto Rica and New York, before finishing in Toronto, Canada, on March 16th. Over the 45 day period on this leg alone the band is anticipated to play to well over 400,000 fans in 21 cities in 10 countries, flying close to 50,000 miles in this refitted 757 which will be flown largely by vocalist and Astraeus Airline Captain Bruce Dickinson.

The second leg of the tour will be in mid-May to mid -June in North America while the final third leg takes place in July and August in stadiums and major festivals around Europe. In total the band are expected to play to well in excess of one and a half million fans during the whole tour."