Mötley Crüe: Where Are They Now in 2026?
Forty-five years on from the Sunset Strip. The four men who sold the 80s its own bad reputation are not a memory act, and 2026 has been the loudest year they have had in a while. One of them had to learn to walk again to get here.
As of August 2026: Vince Neil is 65 and back on stage after a stroke that doctors thought had ended his career, Nikki Sixx is 67 and just marked 25 years sober, Tommy Lee is 63 and behind the kit on a 33-date North American tour, and Mick Mars is 75, out of the band since 2022, on the other side of a legal fight that ended in January. The guitar chair belongs to John 5 now. Here is where each of them actually stands.
Vince Neil
The where-are-they-now story of this band in the 2020s belongs to its singer, and it is not the one anybody expected.
On December 26, 2024, Neil woke up and could not move his left side. He kept it private for months. When Mötley Crüe postponed their spring 2025 Las Vegas residency, the announcement said only that he needed a “required medical procedure,” and Neil told fans, “My health is my top priority so I can bring you the awesome shows you deserve, and I can’t wait to return to the stage.”
He finally explained it to the Las Vegas Review-Journal in an interview published on September 12, 2025. “I had a stroke,” he said. “My whole left side went out.” He had to learn to walk again. “The doctors said they didn’t think I’d be able to go back on stage again,” he told the paper, and then described the climb back: “I went from people carrying me to the bathroom, because I couldn’t walk myself, finally to a wheelchair. I graduated to a walker, and then I had a cane. Now I don’t need anything.” He did his physical therapy at home in Nashville, worked with a local football coach on running drills, and put himself at “90, 95 percent to where I was before.”
His voice was never affected. He proved it in public on August 1, 2025, at MGM Music Hall at Fenway in Boston, playing a seven-song set on a bill with Bret Michaels and Stephen Pearcy. It was his first show in nearly ten months. “I had a medical thing that happened to me, and they said I wouldn’t be back on stage again,” he told the room before Shout at the Devil. The postponed Vegas residency finally ran September 12 to October 3, 2025.
Neil’s public record has two permanent entries and they belong here. On December 8, 1984, he was driving drunk in Redondo Beach when he lost control of his car; Hanoi Rocks drummer Nicholas “Razzle” Dingley, his passenger, was killed, and the two people in the oncoming car were seriously injured. Neil was charged with vehicular manslaughter and driving under the influence, and in September 1985 he was sentenced to 30 days in jail, five years’ probation, $2.6 million in restitution and 200 hours of community service. He served 15 days. Mötley Crüe dedicated Theatre of Pain to Razzle. And in 1995 Neil’s four-year-old daughter Skylar died of cancer. He founded the Skylar Neil Memorial Fund in her name, and the Skylar Neil Memorial Foundation has since donated millions of dollars to the T.J. Martell Foundation’s work on children’s illnesses.
Nikki Sixx
Sixx, 67, is the one who speaks for the band’s calendar, and in July 2026 he marked something a lot more personal than a tour date: 25 years sober. He posted about it himself. “It’s hard to wrap a lifetime of lessons into a few paragraphs, but one thing has never changed: sobriety gave me a life I never imagined was possible,” he wrote, and then, “Twenty-five years later, I don’t celebrate perfection. I celebrate progress. I celebrate love. I celebrate the people who walked beside me when I couldn’t walk alone.”
For anyone who read The Heroin Diaries, his 2007 account of the year he nearly did not survive, that number is the whole story. The man who wrote that book is now the one telling everybody when to stop. He has said there are no plans to tour in 2027: after this summer’s 33 shows the contract is up and they will need “some real time off to decide what we do or do not wanna do in the future.” His stated reason for enjoying this run is not complicated either. “No tour plans in 2027 at this point and my family is with me now. So I’m living in the moment,” he told fans on social media in late July 2026.
He married Courtney Bingham in 2014, their daughter Ruby was born in 2019, and the family is out on the road with him. He has kept the writing going too: The First 21, his account of the years before the band, came out in 2021.
Tommy Lee
Lee is 63 and doing what he has done since 1981, which is play the drums louder than the building. Between Crüe cycles he has run Methods of Mayhem, released solo records, and spent years DJing electronic sets under his own name and with DJ Aero. He married Brittany Furlan on Valentine’s Day 2019, a year to the day after he proposed. His two sons with Pamela Anderson, Brandon and Dylan, are grown men now, both born in the back half of the 90s.
What has not changed is the engineering problem he keeps setting himself. The revolving kit, the kit spinning end over end, the whole rig suspended above the crowd while he kept playing: for four decades the Tommy Lee drum solo has been less a solo than a carnival ride with a drummer bolted to it. Everything else about the band changed. That did not.
Mick Mars
Mars, 75, has not been in Mötley Crüe since 2022, and the reason is a disease he has carried since he was a teenager. He has had ankylosing spondylitis, an inflammatory arthritis that attacks the spine and pelvis, since the pain started at 14; he was not properly diagnosed until 27. It fused his lower spine, took three inches off his height, and by 2013 had stiffened his neck so badly he could not turn his head to drive. He has always framed it the same way: the condition rarely hits the hands or the feet, and “That meant I could play guitar, and that’s what mattered most.” He refused a cane and a wheelchair on stage. “If I can’t get up there myself, I’m not doing it.”
On October 26, 2022, he announced he was retiring from touring. What followed was a dispute with the band over money and status that ran for three years. It is finished. In January 2026 an independent arbitrator ruled for Mötley Crüe, found that Mars had given up his claim to touring revenue when he stopped touring, and ordered him to repay more than $750,000 of an advance covering shows he did not play. Mötley Crüe has filed to confirm the award in Los Angeles County Superior Court. That is the settled record, and we are going to leave the rest of it to the people who lived it.
The better news is the music. Mars put out his first solo album at 72: The Other Side of Mars, released February 23, 2024 on his own 1313 label, recorded in Nashville by producer Michael Wagener with a band including Jacob Bunton, Winger keyboardist Paul Taylor and drummer Ray Luzier. It is closer to grunge and hard rock than to anything on the Strip, Bunton sings most of it, and the title is Mars explaining himself: the record is about “the Mötley side and the Mars side” of how he plays. Forty-three years after the band started, the guitar player who never wanted to be famous finally made a record that was only his.
John 5, and the chair Mars left
John 5, born John Lowery, turned 56 on July 31 and has now been in the band longer than some fans realize. He came in as Mars’ touring replacement in October 2022, the day after the retirement announcement, and the band’s own website now simply lists him as one of the four alongside Neil, Sixx and Lee, with the official bio noting that Mötley Crüe has continued with John 5 on guitar since 2023.
He arrived overqualified. He spent 1998 to 2004 in Marilyn Manson’s band, then seventeen years with Rob Zombie, and he has released eleven instrumental solo albums along the way, the most recent being Ghost in 2025. Whatever you think a guitar player with that résumé does with a Crüe set list, he is doing it on this summer’s tour.
Remember when the parental-advisory sticker was basically an advertisement, and Mötley Crüe were the band your mother named specifically? Four decades later three of those four men are still on a stage together, and the fourth finally got around to making his own album.
What the band is doing right now
Mötley Crüe are in the middle of The Return of the Carnival of Sins, a 33-date North American tour that opened July 17, 2026 in Burgettstown, Pennsylvania and runs through September 26 in Ridgefield, Washington, with Tesla and Extreme opening. It marks two milestones at once: 45 years since the band formed and 20 years since the original Carnival of Sins run. One dollar from every ticket goes to the After School Arts Program through the band’s Giveback initiative.
They got here on a run of activity that would tire out a band half their age: the “Cancelled” EP in October 2024, their first new music since 2019, released alongside three club shows back on the Sunset Strip that raised $350,000 for Covenant House; a ten-night Las Vegas residency at Dolby Live at Park MGM in September and October 2025, their first Vegas run in more than a decade; and a televised performance on the American Idol finale in May 2026, which is where Sixx talked publicly about watching Neil claw his way back. “Most people would’ve quit,” he said. “It’s a lot of work to go from you’re basically done to on stage and rocking the house.”
Then, per Sixx, nothing in 2027.
The honest bottom line
Every band from this scene eventually gets asked the same question, which is whether the people are still in there under the legend. With this one you can actually answer it. The bass player has been sober for a quarter century and says so out loud on the anniversary. The singer had a stroke at 63, was told he was finished, and spent seven months learning to walk so he could get back in front of a crowd, which is either the least subtle comeback in rock history or simply what happened. The guitar player left because his spine gave out, went to arbitration over what he was owed, lost, and made the album he had been talking about since 2014 anyway. The drummer is still building rides. Nobody in this story is coasting on 1987, and given the odds they were running back then, all four of them being here to argue about it is the actual headline.
FAQ
Is Mötley Crüe still touring in 2026?
Yes. The Return of the Carnival of Sins runs 33 North American dates from July 17 to September 26, 2026, with Tesla and Extreme opening. Nikki Sixx has said the band has no touring plans for 2027.
What happened to Vince Neil?
He suffered a stroke on December 26, 2024 that paralyzed his left side and forced Mötley Crüe to postpone their spring 2025 Las Vegas residency. He relearned to walk, returned to the stage in Boston on August 1, 2025, and is touring with the band in 2026.
Why did Mick Mars leave Mötley Crüe?
He retired from touring on October 26, 2022 because of ankylosing spondylitis, a form of inflammatory arthritis he has lived with since his teens. He and the band then spent three years in a legal dispute, which an arbitrator decided in the band’s favor in January 2026.
Who plays guitar for Mötley Crüe now?
John 5, formerly of Marilyn Manson’s band and Rob Zombie’s, who stepped in when Mars retired in October 2022. The band’s official site lists the current lineup as Vince Neil, Nikki Sixx, Tommy Lee and John 5.
How long has Nikki Sixx been sober?
He marked 25 years of sobriety in July 2026.
Did Mick Mars release a solo album?
Yes. The Other Side of Mars, his first solo record, came out on February 23, 2024, recorded in Nashville with producer Michael Wagener.
Want the decade that made them, the albums, the umlauts and the Strip? Start with Mötley Crüe in the 80s, then see how the rest of the scene turned out in 80s hair bands: where are they now and our countdown of the best 80s hair bands.