The Spice Girls in 1997
© AFP/File Bertrand GuayLONDON (AFP) - The 1990s all-girl band, one of the most successful acts in the history of pop, will play 11 dates around the world in December 2007 and January 2008, they said.
"Hey everybody!! We're back!! Can you believe it!!" said a statement on their website signed by Victoria Beckham, Geri Halliwell, Melanie Brown, Melanie Chisholm and Emma Bunton.
The band will start their tour in Los Angeles in the United States on December 7 before heading to Las Vegas, New York, London, Cologne, Madrid, Beijing, Hong Kong, Sydney, Cape Town and Buenos Aires.
With organisers expecting high demand for tickets, fans face putting their names into a ticket lottery for the chance to see the group, although the website adds that extra dates may still be announced.
The announcement came shortly ahead of a London press conference at which the group, who are now all in their 30s and have six children between them, posed together for photographers for the first time in years.
The Spice Girls sold over 50 million records worldwide and scored nine British number one singles in the 1990s.
They formed in 1994 after their management company placed an advertisement in a newspaper for performers.
Their first hit, "Wannabe" in 1996, was followed by a string of others including "Stop", "Spice Up Your Life" and "Say You'll Be There".
The group became icons of "Cool Britannia" -- Britain's booming popular culture scene in the late 1990s -- and met figures including Nelson Mandela, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles, whose bottom Halliwell pinched.
Ginger, Posh, Scary, Sporty and Baby, as the band members were known, coined the phrase "girl power", a never fully defined concept which encouraged their mainly teenage and pre-teenage female fans to be more assertive.
The Spice Girls also spawned a vast range of marketing spin-offs, from their 1997 movie "Spiceworld" to chocolate, dolls and deodorant.
The band's death knell sounded in 1998, when Halliwell quit, but they only formally split up in 2001.
By then, though, all of the group had forged successful, although short-lived, solo careers.
Victoria Adams, by then known as Victoria Beckham and best known for her marriage to England footballer David Beckham, was the only member of the group not to secure a British number one on her own.
Today, Beckham is by far the best known of the group -- the British press features almost daily stories, many hostile, about "Posh" and her husband, who will move clubs from Real Madrid to LA Galaxy in the United States within days.
Brown, meanwhile, has also been back in the media limelight recently thanks to a paternity battle with Hollywood actor Eddie Murphy, who she claims is the father of her baby daughter, Angel.
The Spice Girls' announcement comes after another 1990s teen band, Take That, successfully reformed last year, although without founder member Robbie Williams.
©AFP