Following the successful completion of his 2026 Western Front Signature Tour, renowned military historian Mat McLachlan has announced he will again lead a flagship Western Front Signature Tour in 2027 — the only land tour he will personally escort next year.
“I’ve just completed my 2026 Western Front Signature Tour, and it was an incredible journey — nine days exploring these battlefields with a wonderful group of travellers, the kind of trip that reminds me all over again why I do what I do. This is a tour built on the places, stories and personal connections that have shaped my own understanding of the Western Front, and I can’t wait to share them with a new group in 2027,” said Mat McLachlan.
The Mat McLachlan Western Front Signature Tour offers behind-the-scenes access, special inclusions and unique dining experiences at sites central to the Anzac story of mateship and sacrifice. Highlights include visiting Chateaux Bertangles where Sir John Monash had his headquarters during WWI and was later knighted on the steps, and an exclusive dinner at Talbot House in Poperinge, a WWI ‘everyman’s club’ behind the lines which was founded by Australian-born Tubby Clayton to provide a place of relaxation and respite. Today, stepping through the doors of Talbot House is like being transported back in history.
The tour includes a welcome dinner in Paris and farewell diner cruise on the Seine in The City of Light, three nights Amiens, and three-nights in Ypres in Belgium – a town almost entirely destroyed by shellfire during the Great War, Ypres was painstakingly rebuilt and its medieval-style Cloth Hall and cobbled streets are incredible to explore. Ypres is also home to the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing – a triumphal arch under which the Last Post service is performed every evening at 8pm.
Places are limited and the tour is expected to sell out, as it has in previous years.
In 2027, there is also the opportunity to sail with Mat on his inaugural Mat McLachlan Signature Cruise aboard AmaWaterways, which departs from Amsterdam in September 2027 travelling through the Netherlands and Belgium, with stops exploring Waterloo, the WWI battlefields of the Ypres Salient, and WWII’s Operation Market Garden.
