Due to the shift of global politics in a conservative direction, highlighted by the United Kingdom's Brexit referendum and the 2016 US presidential election, the band decided to delay Songs of Experience from its planned release in the fourth quarter of 2016 to reassess its tone and whether it was still communicating what they wanted it to.

Furthermore, lead vocalist Bono suffered what he referred to as a "brush with mortality" shortly after Christmas 2016,[5] further affecting the direction of Songs of Experience.

[6] Both the 2015 and 2018 tours were structured around a loose autobiographical narrative about U2, grounded in the story of the death of Bono's mother and the violence of the Troubles that shaped the band members' youths in Ireland.

The firm started by trying to solve the weight problem from the original tour, an issue further complicated by the band's request to make the LED screens higher resolution, more transparent, and able to support an augmented reality (AR) element.

PRG's Pure10 video panels featured a pixel pitch of 10 millimetres (0.39 in), which alone nearly tripled the display resolution of the "barricage" screen and thus enabled an AR event to be triggered.

[12] PRG used their experience building the SPACEFRAME framing system for U2's Joshua Tree Tour 2017 to design a carbon fibre structure to hold the Pure10 panels, rather than one made from conventional metal.

[12] Above the B-stage, an "automation grid" featured a Smart Winch and six Nav Hoists by Tait to vertically move props, such as an LED ring, a light bulb, and a mirror ball.

[15] The AR segment of the show was viewed using the "U2 Experience" mobile app for iOS and Android devices,[16] which overlaid computer generated imagery over footage captured by a phone's camera.

During the pre-show music, the AR experience saw "the stage recast as an enormous iceberg" that began to melt and flood the audience; the imagery was a precursor to the tsunami wave that displayed on the video screens during the final song of the show's first act, "Until the End of the World".

"[18] AR was further used during the concerts through a camera filter that helped Bono revive his old stage character "MacPhisto", a representation of the devil that he previously portrayed on the Zoo TV Tour in 1993.

The filter, called the "MacPhisto Effect", was created by Marc Wakefield on the Facebook for Developers AR Studio platform, in collaboration with the tour architect Ric Lipson and his design studio Treatment Ltd. Wakefield drew the attention of U2's creative team after creating a popular "creepy clown" filter and receiving an invitation to Facebook's annual developers conference.

After several iterations and feedback provided by Bono, the resulting likeness featured sharper, more misshapen teeth, cracked and peeling skin, a beaten up top hat, a longer nose and chin, and a large blemish on his cheek.

[19] Just as with the original tour, the omnidirectional nature of the production and the possibility of the band members being spread out during performances presented a challenge for the sound design.

With the sound system designed to provide omnipresent audio, the front of house mixing station could be positioned nearly anywhere in the venue as long as it was equidistant between CO-12 arrays.

During the tour, the station was usually positioned within the audience seating, from which sound engineer Joe O'Herlihy operated a DiGiCo SD7 digital mixing console, one of eight used by the production staff.

[40] During "The Blackout", the screens displayed silhouettes of the band members that Stereogum said resembled "characters in a horror movie trying to break free of a glass chamber".

[43] For the European leg, "Love Is All We Have Left" and the accompanying AR segment were dropped from the opening sequence as a result of Treatment reworking the introduction video for Europe.

For a majority of the tour, the remainder of the first act reprised the "Innocence suite" from the 2015 tour relatively faithfully: "Iris (Hold Me Close)" revisited the death of Bono's mother during his childhood; "Cedarwood Road" featured him performing inside the "barricage" amidst animated visuals of his childhood street; "Sunday Bloody Sunday" revisited the violence of the Troubles during the band members' youth; and "Until the End of the World" concluded the first act.

[46] During a brief intermission, St Francis Hotel's "Gotham Experience Remix" of U2's song "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me" was played, featuring vocals from Gavin Friday and Arcade Fire's Régine Chassagne.

[47][48] It accompanied a comic book–style animated video that depicted the members of U2 evolving from innocence to experience through their encounters with a shadowy figure who presented a business card for "Wormwood & Macphisto Inc. Bespoke Atonement Services".

As MacPhisto, he commented on recent sociopolitical events and movements such as the Charlottesville rally by riffing on the lyrics from the Rolling Stones' song "Sympathy for the Devil".

Prior to the encore, a recording of the song "Women of the World" by Jim O'Rourke played, accompanied by images of the Edge's daughter, Sian.

During the final song, Bono walked out to the B-stage and opened a small replica of his childhood home to reveal a hanging lightbulb that he swung around the venue.

[58] Sirius XM organised a contest in which the service's subscribers could win tickets to a special U2 concert at New York's Apollo Theater on 11 June 2018.

[59] The band were accompanied by the Sun Ra Arkestra for performances of "Angel of Harlem", "Desire", "When Love Comes to Town", and "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of".

Jennifer O'Brien of The Times praised the group for delivering a message that espoused tolerance and denounced the political climate, and she thought the reliance on new material and absence of The Joshua Tree songs did not hurt the setlist.

[66] Dave Egan in the Irish Independent called the opening night "One of the bravest, most powerful and even angriest performances U2 have ever done" and praised the reintroduction of MacPhisto after an absence of 25 years since Zoo TV.

[67] Reviewing the first show at the Forum, Roy Trakin in Variety said that "when it comes to performing live, the band remains the gold (and platinum) standard" and noted that U2 refused to rely on nostalgia, with almost half the set being taken from the last two albums.

[69] Nashville Scene said, "When it comes to matching musical themes with jaw-dropping visuals, U2 concerts are the Steven Spielberg films, the James Cameron epics, the Star Wars-sized events of rock."

The publication praised the group for being "determined not to rest on its laurels", but judged that their emphasis on newer material towards the end of the show at the expense of well-known hits was the one flaw of the concert.