Queen and Adam Lambert are coming back to NZ

Queen and Adam Lambert will perform in Auckland in February.

Queen are planning to rock Kiwi crowds again - and this time the legendary band are bringing an entirely different show.

The British rock act of Brian May and Roger Taylor have confirmed they'll perform with Adam Lambert at Auckland's Spark Arena on February 18.

Lambert, a former American Idol contestant, has performed with the group since 2011, filling in for late front man Freddie Mercury, who died in 1991.

It'll be their first New Zealand show since 2014, but guitarist May says this will be more ambitious than the last.

"The general public knows the hits, so you've got to cater for that, but we can chuck in a few things that people really don't expect," he said.

"We'll do quite a bit more of that this time around. There are so many dimensions to Adam, which of course fits with our music. He can get down and do the rock stuff really dirty, and you have all those dimensions, and we can explore that even more."

Lambert said they wanted to challenge themselves this time, "change it up a little bit, change the visuals, change all the technology, change the set list to some degree".

"We will probably be pulling some other songs out of the Queen catalogue that we haven't done before, which I am very excited about," he said.

Drummer Taylor said the show would "look entirely different to the show we took around before".

"We're planning on doing stuff we either haven't done before or haven't done for a long time."

Tickets go on sale on June 23 at 10am.