July 22, 2026 marked a year since Ozzy Osbourne’s death, but his presence remains as strong as ever. The next 12 months will see a raft of high-profile events keeping the singer’s memory alive, including the return of Ozzfest, a film of the Back To The Beginning show, and the controversial Ozzy AI avatar.
“Ozzy’s legacy isn’t fading,” says the singer’s wife and manager, Sharon Osbourne, in an interview in the brand new issue of Metal Hammer. “I cannot tell you how blown away we’ve all been with the love that has been shown for him.”
Sharon confirms that 2027 will see the return of Ozzfest, the travelling festival that helped change the course of metal in the late 1990s and early 2000s – and she also added that it would be held at Villa Park in Birmingham, the venue for Ozzy’s swansong, the star-packed Back To The Beginning gig, which took place on July 5, 2025.
“It’s going to be at Villa Park again,” says Sharon. “Whether it’ll be two nights [in Birmingham], that’s up for the fans to tell me.”
At the time of going to press, no date or festival headliners had been announced. “Of course we’re speaking to people,” she says. “I can’t let that out yet, but it’ll be soon.”
Speaking to her son Jack on The Osbournes Podcast in March, Sharon said that she hoped to bring Ozzfest to the US for two dates.
“We want to hear from everyone where we should go in America,” she told Jack. “We’ve got to find a lot of young, new talent, because that’s what your dad would want.”
There are also plans to revisit Back To The Beginning itself. A much-rumoured film of the show will finally be released, featuring appearances from all the bands who played, from Metallica and Guns N’ Roses to Black Sabbath and Ozzy himself.
“It’s coming. It will be out this year,” Sharon promises. “The most precious thing that people can give you is their time, and they all took time out of their summer to come and do this show. Everybody deserves to be seen and heard.”
More contentious is the upcoming AI avatar of Ozzy. The Osbournes have teamed up with tech companies Hyperreal and Proto Hologram to create a digital version of the singer that fans can talk to and interact with.
“You can ask [the digital] Ozzy anything, and he will answer you in his own voice – and the answers will be what Ozzy would have said,” Sharon said at the Licensing Expo 2026 in Las Vegas in May. “People can talk to him and he will talk back.”
While specific details and locations are still under wraps, the avatar will reportedly appear via interactive touchscreens. The news has prompted pushback from some fans.
“I’ve seen such shit online about it being a ‘money grab’,” Sharon tells Hammer. “Why would I need to do that? It’s not as if I’m using Ozzy to sell fucking weedkiller or beer. Ozzy loved the idea. We’ve been talking about it for 10 years. Ozzy has this great body of work that took a lifetime to do – why shouldn’t he still be seen? Why should we have to watch the same videos over and over again, when there’s technology available that means we don’t have to? If you don’t like it, don’t go see it. I’m not at people’s houses with a fucking gun, going, ‘Give me your money!’”
Less controversial is the long-gestating Ozzy biopic, which Sharon says is moving forwards after years in development hell.
“We’re now on our second writer because we had somebody else write three different drafts, and we felt that it wasn’t Ozzy’s voice,” says Sharon. “We feel that this new guy has got Ozzy’s voice, and we’re ready to send [the script] out to directors. When I used to see people get up at the Oscars and say, ‘I’ve been working on this movie for 20 years, and we finally got it made!’ I’d think, ‘Bullshit.’ But it’s true. It’s not like making a record, believe you me. Working with the writers and the directors is a whole fucking lifetime commitment to get a movie done.”
Elsewhere, the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery has recently extended Working Class Hero, its exhibition dedicated to Ozzy, until September 27. The gothic black throne used by Ozzy at Back To The Beginning was added to the exhibition at the start of July to mark the anniversary of the show. Sadly, a campaign to rename Birmingham Airport after Ozzy has so far been unsuccessful, despite almost 78,000 people signing a petition.
“Birmingham has always been embarrassed about its heavy metal heritage – and that’s unacceptable,” the campaign’s organiser, Dan Hudson, told Hammer in January.
Still, Sharon says her plans to honour her husband’s legacy will be a fitting tribute to the Prince Of Darkness.
“He’s the guy that came from nothing, had nothing, and made it – and he never, ever forgot who he was or where he came from,” she says. “He never tried to be anything other than what he was – a genuine guy, fucking out of his mind, beautifully insane. He was just one in a million.”
The new issue of Metal Hammer is onsale now. Order it here and have it delivered straight to your door.
(Image credit: Future)
