It was the moment Canadian rock fans had been waiting over a decade for — and it hit like a freight train.
Rush surprised the crowd at the 2026 Juno Awards on Sunday night, March 29th, by taking the stage and playing “Finding My Way” — the band’s first performance in nearly 11 years. The venue? TD Coliseum in Hamilton, Ontario — practically Rush’s backyard, just down the road from Toronto where the band grew up. It felt right.
Nobody saw it coming. The reunion of Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson was not announced in advance, but was teased in the band’s newsletter earlier this week, with fans told to tune in for a “special moment.” Special moment indeed.
A New Era, With a Nod to the Past
The newly reconfigured band features founding bassist and singer Geddy Lee, guitarist Alex Lifeson, and newly recruited drummer Anika Nilles and keyboardist Loren Gold. Nilles replaces the late Neil Peart, who died in 2020, while Loren Gold — who has worked with The Who and Chicago — made his live Rush debut alongside her.
Nilles, in what was likely the most pressure-filled moment of her career, simply excelled, playing a huge kit with the Rush logo on the bass drum, bashing her way through virtuosic fills. Lee and Lifeson, meanwhile, seemed energized after their long break, with Lee hitting notes at the top of his youthful range.
And through it all, the past was never far away. As the band played, clips of the late Neil Peart performing with Rush played on screens behind them — a simple yet powerful tribute.
The song choice was deeply deliberate — and, as Geddy admitted afterward, a little bit practical. “You really can’t ask us what song to play,” Lee told reporters afterward. “If we have to choose one song, it’s almost impossible. We have so many. So we just asked management, and they said first song, first album.”
“Also,” Lifeson added, “it’s the only song we know how to play.”
Classic Alex.
“Finding My Way” is the lead track on Rush’s 1974 self-titled debut, and according to Setlist.fm, this was the first time the group performed the track in full in over 45 years. The choice was also symbolically clean: that debut album featured John Rutsey on drums in the studio, rather than Neil Peart, who didn’t join the band until afterward. In a sense, Rush went back to before Peart to imagine what comes after him.
Peart died on January 7th, 2020, after a private battle with brain cancer. The wound has been deep and very public — and Sunday night marked the first time Lee and Lifeson have formally stepped back into the Rush identity since that loss.
Rush won the inaugural Juno Award for best hard rock/metal album in 1991 for their 13th album, Presto. They belong to this stage. And after an 11-year absence, they looked like they never left it.
What’s Next: The Fifty Something Tour
Sunday’s performance was more than a one-off nostalgia trip. It serves as a preview for Rush’s Fifty Something world tour, celebrating five decades of the band, which begins June 7, 2026, at the Forum in Los Angeles — the same venue where they played their final show with Peart in 2015.
The tour will include multiple-night residencies in several major cities. The return also coincides with the release of a newly expanded edition of Grace Under Pressure, featuring a brand-new mix of the album by original producer Terry Brown, a complete concert film from their Maple Leaf Gardens show from September 21, 1984, and Geddy Lee’s first liner notes for a Rush reissue.
Last night in Hamilton, Rush answered a question millions of fans have been sitting with since Neil Peart passed: can Rush go on? The answer, delivered in thundering riffs and a classic bass growl and the crackling fills of a fearless new drummer, was a resounding yes.
Finding their way, indeed.
