Roger Taylor says a Queen avatar show is 'a possibility', but he won't tour with a virtual Freddie

Roger Taylor told Virgin Radio on September 10, 2026 that a Queen avatar show is “a possibility”, then spent the rest of the exchange walking it back. Asked point blank by host Chris Evans whether he was going on tour with Freddie Mercury, Queen’s drummer said no, and added that he wished it was. The interview was picked up by MusicRadar four days later.

What Taylor actually said was smaller than the headline it produced. “Brian and I talk because we live near each other. There is a possibility of doing something, not quite sure what it is yet.”

Then the part that started it: “But technology has come on so far. Like the Abba show, for instance.”

What Roger Taylor said on the Chris Evans Breakfast Show

Evans pushed. “So you’re going on tour with Freddie? This is what’s happening. Is that what’s happening?”

“No,” Taylor said. “I wish it was.”

“

It could happen, though, couldn't it? Sort of. It sort of could.

That is the whole commitment. No announcement, no venue, no date, no partner named. Taylor raised ABBA Voyage as evidence the technology works, conceded something could happen, and stopped there.

Brian May raised the same idea a year earlier

Taylor is not the first one to float it. Brian May told The Big Issue last year that he was open to the format, and his version was more specific about what it would need to be.

“It wouldn’t be just playing old footage or whatever. It would be creating Queen as if we were creating it today,” May said. “I’m very taken with the idea that we can be the original Queen again.”

That is a description of full digital recreation rather than a projection show, and it is the expensive version. Queen has been circling this idea since at least 2025, when May’s comments prompted reporting about a possible residency.

Why half of Queen is unavailable for motion capture

The practical barrier is the lineup. Freddie Mercury died in 1991, which means any digital Freddie has to be constructed from archive material rather than captured from a performer in a suit. ABBA had all 4 members alive and willing to spend weeks in motion capture. Queen does not.

Bassist John Deacon retired from public life in the late 1990s and has stayed retired. Building the original lineup would need him to either sit through the same capture process or re-record his parts, and nothing in the last 25 years suggests he would.

What the avatar show market looks like in 2026

ABBA Voyage is still the only production of this kind that has worked. Everything else has either underdelivered or not opened.

Elvis Evolution turned out to be a live band performing against projected archive footage rather than a digital Elvis, and MusicRadar called it a damp squib. A Kiss avatar show is scheduled to open next year, which will be the next real test of whether the format travels beyond one act in one purpose-built room.

For Queen the question is not whether the technology can do it. It is whether an audience pays arena prices for a Freddie Mercury that nobody ever filmed doing that performance. Taylor’s “sort of” suggests he has not answered that one either.