The concert Hasbro staged at San Diego Comic-Con in July is now sitting on YouTube in full. The official Transformers channel posted THE TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE 40th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION OF LIFE CONCERT on August 21, 2026, running one hour, fifty three minutes and fourteen seconds, with the whole setlist chaptered so you can drop straight into whichever act you came for.

The event itself took place on July 23, 2026. Hasbro’s own copy files it under a tour name that tells you exactly which forty year old wound is being addressed: the key art brands it “The Apology Tour”, and the video description calls it part of the company’s ongoing apology “for the moment none of you have quite recovered from”. Nobody has to spell out which moment.

Three acts, and only the last one is Transformers

The billing is stranger and better than a straight tribute set. It runs as three acts across the wider 1980s Hasbro cartoon block, with the same core band anchoring two of them.

Britta Phillips opens. She was the original singing voice of Jem, and her set is a full run at that catalogue, twelve chapters that take in the Jem theme, Only The Beginning, Twilight In Paris, Glitter and Gold, Truly Outrageous, She’s Got The Power and Music is Magic, closing out around the twenty eight minute mark.

Cold Slither follow, which is to say the G.I. Joe fiction has been taken entirely at face value and turned into a working band. Their set opens with Welcome To The Swamp and works through Knock Em Dread, These Fluffies Are Fatal, Under The Dreadnok Spell, Zartan’s Revenge, Cobra Island and Thunder Machine before landing on Cold Slither itself at 55:48. Britta Phillips then comes back for a second pass at the Jem theme at 1:01:27.

The Knights of Unicron take the last fifty minutes. Per the video credits the group is Matt Harvey, Gus Rios, Andy Selway and Ross Sewage, the same players who back the Cold Slither set.

The bit you skip to

If you only have twenty five minutes, start at 1:26:45. The chapter list from there reads:

  • 1:26:45 Death Of Optimus Prime, featuring Vince DiCola
  • 1:33:25 The Touch, featuring Stan Bush and Vince DiCola
  • 1:38:29 Dare, featuring Stan Bush and Vince DiCola
  • 1:43:54 Escape
  • 1:49:30 Nothin’s Gonna Stand In Our Way, featuring Sebastian Bach

Bach is the one the room would not have seen coming, and putting him on the Spectre General track rather than on The Touch is the right instinct. Earlier in the same set Brittney Slayes takes the Transformers theme at 1:04:35 and Hunger at 1:08:56, Francesco Cavalieri sings Instruments Of Destruction at 1:13:59, and Torch handles Dare To Be Stupid at 1:18:27, which is followed by an Autobot and Decepticon Battle instrumental at 1:22:00.

Having DiCola on stage for Death Of Optimus Prime is the whole point of the exercise. That cue is his, it is the reason the 1986 film still lands the way it does, and it is the single piece of music most responsible for the apology the tour name is joking about. Optimus Prime has been brought back more than once since. The scoring of the original death has never needed a revision.

What they are actually playing

The material is not the 1986 recordings. It is The Transformers: The Movie Soundtrack: The Reformatted Edition, the 40th anniversary re-recording built by the Knights of Unicron, which is why the live band and the album credits line up.

BigBadToyStore’s listing for the album credits Stan Bush and Vince DiCola alongside Sebastian Bach of Skid Row, Mark Osegueda of Death Angel, Francesco Cavalieri of Wind Rose, Brittney Slayes of Unleash The Archers and Cold Slither’s Torch, with the tracks rebuilt by Gus Rios, Matt Harvey and Ross Sewage. Note that the album is credited to three Knights and the concert to four, Andy Selway being the addition on stage.

BBTS has the record as a store exclusive Hot Rod red vinyl LP on Reigning Phoenix Music, in stock at $35.99 as of August 23, 2026. It is the same 40th anniversary push that produced the Shout! Factory anniversary DVD dated for October 13, so if you were waiting to buy the film again, the soundtrack now has a physical edition to sit next to it.

TFW2005 reports the concert was broadcast live in July and pulled offline once it finished, which would make the August 21 upload the first chance most people have had to watch it. Either way it is there now, and it is free.

Sources