One Direction global tour announcement leaves a million Directioners all of a Twitter

One Direction performing at The Brit Awards, Show, O2 Arena, London (Rex Features)

Boy band One Direction have announced plans for a world tour.

The group revealed details of the mammoth Where We Are Tour at a press conference at Wembley Stadium in north London.

The group, who shot to fame on the X Factor, have become a global phenomenon since their debut single in 2011 and have sold more than 30 million records and DVDs globally and topped the charts in more than 37 countries.

The stadium tour in 2014 will include five UK and Ireland dates and eight in Latin America, according to the One Direction website.

The band will play Sunderland's Stadium of Light on May 28, Manchester City's Etihad stadium on May 31, Edinburgh's Murrayfield stadium on June 3 and on June 7 they will perform at Wembley. They will play Dublin's Croke Park on May 25.

The Latin American leg of the tour in April and May will see them visit Brazil (two concerts), Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Paraguay, Chile and Uruguay.

The website said more dates would be added soon.

One Direction shot to fame after coming third in the 2010 series of the X Factor, where they lost out to singer-songwriter Matt Cardle.

But the five-piece have gone on to eclipse the eventual winner, enjoying a string of top 10 singles, recording two hit albums and are now about to release their first film, 1D3D.

The band - who said they are all big football fans - stressed that further shows on the world tour would be announced at a later date.

Niall Horan said: "We're incredibly excited to announce we're doing a worldwide stadium tour in 2014.

"We're three years into it (being a band), so stepping out to an audience of 65,000 a night is incredible."

The announcement comes in the middle of the band's current tour, which will see them play in Switzerland tonight and Germany tomorrow.

Asked about what fans - known as Directioners - can expect next year, Styles said: "It's important that the fans know it's not the same tour going around again in stadiums.

"We want to make the stage bigger, with new songs. It's going to be a completely different tour and a lot of fun."

Fellow band members Zayn Malik, Liam Payne and Louis Tomlinson were also present for the announcement today, visibly excited about the prospect of playing in some of the world's greatest stadiums.

The band also confirmed plans for a new album, following last year's Take Me Home, to be released later this year.

They described the sound as "rockier" and "edgy".

Payne said: "It (the sound) kind of grows as we grow."

He added: "We want to do this as long as we can. We can't believe this is happening all at once, but we're just going to go with it.

"I'm looking around Wembley thinking 'It's huge - how are we going to sell out this place?'."

The tour was the subject of more than a million Twitter postings within 80 minutes of the band's announcement, the micro-blogging site said.

Within half an hour, the topic occupied seven of the site's top 10 worldwide trends.

By comparison, it took four hours for tweets relating to Baroness Thatcher's death to hit the one million mark.

However, the news failed to stir the same reaction as Sir Alex Ferguson's retirement, which sparked 1.3 million Twitter postings within an hour.

PA