Stan Walker has announced his first New Zealand shows since he battled cancer last year.

Walker is heading on the 12-date New Takeover tour, which will see him perform across New Zealand's main centres over October and November.

The New Takeover tour will be Walker's first in five years. A 2016 tour was cancelled after his mother was diagnosed with cancer, and in 2017, Walker received his own diagnosis.

Walker told Jack Tame he had to have his stomach removed.

"Last year I found out I had stomach cancer so I got my stomach out and other things out, a few organs, I'm kind of just a heart and bones now," he said.

He almost lost his life from the cancer, which was caused by a rare CDH1 hereditary mutation that runs in his family.
"Me and my mum have the gene [...] basically it's a stomach cancer gene which also can be spread to the breast or even the bowels. So yeah, it's not a good gene to have, not like, you know, 'I've got the gene for being tall or the gene for singing'."

Walker has known he had the gene since he was a young teenager but only found cancer in the latest test.

"I've had a few more check-ups than, probably, most of my family just because I have had different problems, but yeah, in this last one, they found cancer in my stomach. It all happened really quickly."

His mother was the person to break the news to him.

"She just said 'oh son', well she didn't just say 'oh'. She actually rang me twice, the first time she was like, 'they think they've found cancer but they don't know yet, they're going to get back to me' and I was just like, 'well then tell me when they do' [...] and then she called up an hour later and goes, 'yeah, they have found cancer'," Walker said.

He said he wasn't scared when he found out he had cancer and instead it motivated him to make things happen.

LISTEN ABOVE TO JACK TAME'S FULL INTERVIEW WITH STAN WALKER 

Tickets for the New Takeover tour are available from 8am on August 8 from ticketspace.nz

Stan Walker - New Takeover Tour
• October 25 - Queenstown
• October 26 - Invercargill
• October 27 - Dunedin
• October 28 - Christchurch
• October 30 - Nelson
• November 2 - Wellington
• November 3 - Napier
• November 4 - Whanganui
• November 9 - New Plymouth
• November 10 - Mt Maunganui
• November 16 - Hamilton
• November 17 – Auckland