Leg 1: Under Australian Skies

Dubbed the leg "Under Australian Skies",^[1] the band's first tour of Australia and New Zealand took place between The Unforgettable Fire's completion and its release. Plans to visit the two countries were discussed in 1982, and the band had intended to play there in late 1983 but were too tired from the War Tour. Although it had taken years to build up an audience through constant touring in Europe and North America, the band started playing sports arenas straightaway in Australia and New Zealand. The first show was on 29 August 1984 at the Town Hall Auditorium in Christchurch.^[2]

Six shows were added when the first nine sold out. 60,000 tickets were sold for five sell-out shows at the Sydney Entertainment Centre, which was the band's largest audience to date in a single city.^[1] Not having had time to rehearse the new album's songs for live performance, and as they had never played the two countries before, the band played a setlist based on the previous "War Tour". New songs from the album were rehearsed during soundchecks, and "Pride (In the Name of Love)"—which was released as the album's first single in August—and "The Unforgettable Fire" were played from the fourth date onwards.^[1] The final Australian show was on 24 September 1984 at Perth Entertainment Centre, and The Unforgettable Fire was released on 1 October 1984.^[1]

Leg 2: Europe

The tour's second leg consisted of 21 shows in halls and arenas in Western Europe, and ran during October and November 1984.^[3] Following the largely War Tour setlist and presentation of the first leg, the band adapted the shows to the dreamy nature of the new album, and transformed the visual nature of the show. Pursuing a more subtle stage presentation, the band relied more on the moods transcending from the music and lighting as opposed to Bono's active stage antics of previous tours.^[4] When "The Unforgettable Fire" song was played, for example, slides with Japanese writings and lithographs from the exhibit from which the song takes its name were projected onto a white backdrop. During "New Years Day", long white banners were lowered from the ceiling, and during "Pride", a portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. was projected. While illustrating the songs, the images were intended to bridge the gap between the audience rather than having Bono run around the stage.^[4]

The leg was initially meant to start in Rotterdam on 1 October, the day of the album's release, but concerts between 1 and 17 October were postponed until 1985 or cancelled to allow U2 more time to rehearse the new songs. Translating the complex layered atmospheric textures of the new studio-recorded tracks to live performance proved a serious challenge.^[1] One solution was programmed sequencers, which the band until then had been reluctant to use, on sonically elaborate new songs such as "The Unforgettable Fire" and "Bad". Since then sequencers are now used on the majority of U2 songs in performance.^[1] Songs criticised as being "unfinished", "fuzzy" and "unfocused" on the album, made more sense on stage. Rolling Stone, for example, critical of the album version of "Bad", described its live performance as a 'show stopper'.^[5]

Leg 3: North America

The third leg was 10 dates in major United States cities in December 1984, and was intended to gain positive notices in the press and provide a teaser of a major American tour in the first half of 1985. While a couple of shows were in arenas, most shows were in halls and theatres and demand for tickets significantly outstripped supply indicating that U2 would no longer be able to play these smaller venues.^[6]

Leg 4: Europe

After a five-week break, the band returned to Western Europe for 13 shows in January and February 1985, playing cities that had been missed on the previous European leg, including replacement shows for those cancelled in October 1984. The leg included 5 shows in West Germany and the band's first concert in Italy.^[7]

Leg 5: North America

The fifth leg comprised 40 shows, in 29 cities in the United States and Canada. It ran from late February to early May 1985, and was played solely in arenas for the first time, with multiple nights in many of the locations.^[8]

The band had reached the level of popularity where this was possible, but had not yet broken out into widespread fame and familiarity among the general rock and pop audience; that would come in 1987 with the release of The Joshua Tree. The Unforgettable Fire Tour popularity level is sometimes referred to as "mass cult", and is similar to, say, what Bruce Springsteen had on his River Tour before Born in the U.S.A. or what Metallica had on their Damaged Justice tour before their Black Album. It made for intense concerts in this instance, because it provided a very large but fully devoted audience, with fans standing on chairs for the entire performance and continuing "40" refrains long after the show was over.

Leg 6: European Summer Festivals

U2 received 12 invitations to play from European festival promoters of which they played nine from late May through to mid July 1985. Also in this period, they played a homecoming concert at Dublin's Croke Park, their first headlining show in a stadium.^[9]