LONDON (AFP/REUTERS) - British singer Adele is to go on tour in Europe next year, her first live dates in five years, she announced on Thursday.

The Hello star, whose smash hit album 25 was released earlier this month, will play 36 dates from February to June 2016.

The tour will open on Feb 29 at the SSE Arena in Belfast and will end on June 13 at the Sportpaleis in Antwerp, Belgium, a notice sent to subscribers to her website said.

Other concerts will be given elsewhere in Britain and in Ireland, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Portugal, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and France, the notice said.

It said subscribers to her website would be sent instructions on Sunday on how to order tickets and would be allowed to purchase up to four tickets each.

Adele has previously spoken of how she suffers from stage fright, while some media reports had suggested she would not tour her latest album as she does not like leaving her three-year-old son Angelo.

But in a video posted on her Twitter account, she said: "I have been bluffing this whole time and I'm so relieved to finally tell you I am, of course, coming on tour and I can't wait to see all of you there."

Her last tour in 2011 was cut short when she needed surgery on her vocal cords.

25 is on course to smash the record for the highest opening week album sales in the United States, beating 2000's No Strings Attached by boy band NSYNC, featuring Justin Timberlake.

25 is the first full-length work in four years by Adele, whose last album 21 was the top-seller in the United States for two straight years and by far the biggest release this century in her native Britain.

The latest album follows a similar artistic path of ballads about heartbreak, led by the opening track Hello. Her album 21 was best known for the tear-jerker Someone Like You.