News: Le Phoque OFF 2027 Announces Godspeed You! Black Emperor Will Play First Québec City Show in Over a Decade

Since its founding back in 2015, the Québec City-based event Le Phoque OFF has firmly established itself as an essential Quebecois — and in turn, Canadian — festival. Every winter, the event turns the provincial capital into a space for discovering and celebrating alternative and independent music for fans and music industry professionals alike.

Yesterday, event organizers and the members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor announced that the acclaimed Canadian indie outfit will be playing Québec City’s Le Capitole de Québec on Sunday, February 21, 2027 as an epilogue to the 2027 edition of the festival, which closes on Wednesday, February 17, 2021.

Between 1997 and 2002, the Montréal-based Godspeed You! Black Emperor released a string of albums widely recognized as redefining what protest music can be while crafting instrumental chamber rock compositions that serve as soundtracks to late capitalist alienation and resistance. Few rock bands this century have been as steadfast in letting the work speak for itself — and in maintaining some simple rules about minimizing participation in cultures of personality, exposure, commodification or co-optation. After a seven-year hiatus that began in 2003, the acclaimed Montréal-based outfit returned to the stage in 2010. And since then they’ve played hundreds of sold-out live shows across the world. However, their Le Phoque OFF sho will be the first Godspeed show in the provincial capital in over a decade.

“Godspeed You! Black Emperor is one of the greatest independent bands in the world, and not only for the music: for the approach, for the way they’ve made their own path. Presenting them in Québec City is an honour,” Yanick Capuano, the festival’s lead programmer says. “Godspeed and Le Phoque OFF are alike,” Capuano continues. “Independence, being on the margins, fighting against the current. They’ve done it on a completely different scale, but it’s the same trajectory.”

Because the Godspeed You! Black Emperor show will take place outside the festival’s dates, it will have its own seriate box office. But importantly, it’s the first event announced for the festival’s 2027 edition, whose full lineup will be announced in November.

Presale tickets are currently available to Le Phoque OFF subscribers earlier today. And the on-sale to the general public will go public on Friday, September 11, 2026 at 10:00sm.

For more information, check out the festival’s website: https://phoqueoff.com/en

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