Randy Bachman and Burton Cummings — founding guitarist and classic-era singer of the Guess Who, respectively — have been in talks about a Guess Who reunion tour in 2026.

“[Burton is] finishing up his stuff this year, I’m finishing up my BTO stuff,” Bachman told American Songwriter. “And we have a plan for 2026 to be the Guess Who, where … we do a set list of about 30 hit songs, and it’s probably gonna be a two- or three-hour Springsteen kind of marathonic show. And we’re all geared to do that in 2026. It’ll be the unveiling of ‘The Guess Who are back.’”

Bachman already has a lot on his plate, as he will embark on an extensive North American tour with the newly revived Bachman-Turner Overdrive from April through August. He’s also promised the band’s first new album in more than 40 years. Cummings, meanwhile, released A Few Good Moments in 2024, marking his first album in 12 years. He has a handful of solo tour dates scheduled through August.

News of a prospective Guess Who reunion tour also arrives after an intense legal battle in which Bachman and Cummings fought to prevent a different version of the band from touring under the name.

How Randy Bachman and Burton Cummings Won Their Guess Who Lawsuit
Bachman and Cummings filed a lawsuit in late 2023, accusing the then-current Guess Who — which at that point only featured original drummer Garry Peterson — of falsely advertising “a group of hired musicians who have been touring and recording using the band’s name.”

Cummings even went so far as to terminate the performing rights of the Guess Who’s songs, preventing anyone, including himself and the alleged “cover band,” from performing them live. The move also halted all royalty payments from concerts, TV and movie placements and radio plays.

It was a costly and unprecedented gambit, but it worked. Bachman and Cummings reached a settlement with Peterson and original drummer Jim Kale (who performed with the unauthorized Guess Who until his retirement in 2016) last September and now share the band’s trademark rights.

“If there is a group out there calling themselves the Guess Who, it’s going to have the lead singer who wrote the songs and the guitarist who made the riffs,” Cummings said at the time. “It’s going to have Bachman and Cummings in it. I say ‘if’ because we don’t know. Randy has a lot of bookings and I’ve got solo gigs. What we do know is that Randy and I are happy because there isn’t a fake Guess Who out there anymore.”

Just saw Burton this past month and he was good so an actual Guess Who reunion with 2 of the originals would be a must see if they pass through Long Island.

the biggest thing that the two of them going out does is gives both of them the chance to catch their breath between songs, and stretch the song out. And while it would be billed as a Guess Who reunion tour, I'd expect you'd get the big 3-4 BTO songs as well to fill out the set.

i saw cummings also, a couple of year ago in canada.

i cannot lie, he talks way way way too much in between songs.......to the point of it becoming annoying.

if i were to bet, he talked for very close to 50% of the show.

maybe bachman will cause him to tone that down, i do not know, but i do know i would not go see him again solo.

and yes, the music, when he played, was just excellent.

Yeah, Bachman with him enables him to just play, and IIRC, they alternated pretty well, so that Burton never had to do more than 2-3 songs in row without a break. and yes, left to his own devices, I expect it's a 45 minute set stretched out to 75-90 minutes. I suspect I'm spoiled because of Alice Cooper and Ian Gillan, but they're all getting really close to 80.

I don't mind the story teller padding if the stories are interesting - Benatar was really good at it, Cummings just okay - they feel overtold. I'll be curious to see how much of it Rod Stewart does.

still, Canadian rock and roll effectively begins with the Guess Who, so you can't not see them at least once.

You've made this assertion repeatedly over the years here on IMWAN but you forget that the Band started (as the Hawks in 1957), the Guess Who (as Al & The Silvertones) in 1958. The Band contributed to changing music world-wide when touring as Dylan's backing band in 1966. Even discounting that, their first album, Music From Big Pink, changed the rock scene again when it was released in 1968 (don't take my word for it, read accounts by Clapton and George Harrison and hundreds of other artists of the time.) The Guess Who had a fluke hit that was atypical for them in 1965 with "Shakin' All Over" but didn't really hit their stride until Wheatfield Soul and These Eyes in 1969.
I'm not having a competition in terms of quality (My personal taste is that I prefer the more mainstream pop/rock of the Guess Who over the Americana/ country-rock stylings of the Band) but the Band and the Guess Who were developing contemporaneously and singling one out as "begin"-ning rock in Canada is too simplistic.

I saw Burton Cummings last month in Buffalo and the show was excellent in every way. His distinctive voice is still very, very good even though he's 77 years old. Yes, he does tell some stories between songs, mostly about the history of how songs were written and/or what they meant to a band coming up in the business. Although these stories are probably told night after night, I thought they were interesting and not excessive.

I wouldn't hesitate to see Burton again, and I'd see a reformed Guess Who show with Burton and Randy in a heartbeat.

It's a serious deficiency of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame that the The Guess Who has never even been nominated for inclusion.

jim,

i saw cummings in canada, so maybe he was a little glib felling at home and all, i do not exaggerate when i say almost half the show was him talking.

i will go to see him and bachman though, if i get the chance.

renny

Nope, I'm not forgetting, nor am I denigrating the work of the Band or their global importance. Nor am I am denigrating other early critical artists from Canada with massive contributions to popular music - Neil Young and Joni Mitchell - or to a lesser degree, John Kay and Steppenwolf. But they went south first, then changed the world.

The Guess Who were able to get here established first, without leaving, which helped convince the music industry that it might be investing in rock acts here in Canada. So a young garage rock trio from Toronto got a chance with Working Man, and a couple of other 70s "local" Toronto bands - Triumph and April Wine - made their mark soon after and helped make Queen West a place to be. So then we got the late 70's / early 80's Toronto scene for those bar patrons (Rough Trade, Headpins, Toronto, the Spoons, Platinum Blonde.), then the mid-late 80s scene (Tragically Hip, Blue Rodeo, Headstones, Pursuit of Happiness), and then the late 90s Broken Social Scene (BSS, Metric, Feist, Billy Talent, OLP) All in the same bars and nightclubs; the 'Shoe, The El Mo, The Rivoli, The Velvet Underground. Some others lost to time.

And out west? Well, Randy Bachman's friend and BTO manager Bruce Allen signed up and coming Vancouver Rock band Prism; One of their songwriters was Jim Valance, who met an 18 year old kid in a music store in Vancouver, introduced him to Bruce, and their collective songwriting and mix of rock hooks, pop melodies, and melodramatic ballads dominated North American charts for a decade. Allen also signed and launched Loverboy while he was out there. Which led to some more early 80s rock bands - notably Chiliwack and Trooper - breaking from the area. And the Commodore became a place to go as people looked for the next Loverboy or Bryan Adams. And the Commodore and the bars around lasted long enough to give a fertile ground for the next generation of guitar acts, including Nickelback and all their spawn on 604 Records.

That doesn't cover all the important Canadian rock bands, or the artists in other genres, but what I'm arguing is that because of The Guess Who - more than any other act - people learned that they could make money in the music and live promotion industries in Canada, and those people supported, promoted, managed and gave homes to more bands that at their heart, played songs that sound like American Woman and Takin' Care of Business. The Band gave Bob Dylan electric guitars and us the best concert movie ever made...The Guess Who gave Canada an entire rock music industry.

In my opinion, of course.