Def Leppard's Vivian Campbell Says His Cancer Has Returned Again
Def Leppard guitarist Vivian Campbell has told El Salvadoran radio station YSKL that his Hodgkin's lymphoma has returned, despite a donor stem cell transplant he underwent in January 2025 that he had hoped would end more than a decade of treatment.
Campbell was first diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma — a cancer of the lymphatic system — in 2013, after already completing two months of chemotherapy. The disease returned in 2015, forcing him to miss the opening dates of Def Leppard's summer tour that year. He said at the time he was "beyond consolation that its return will prevent me from being able to do my job for a while" (Rolling Stone, 2015).
By the winter of 2023, Campbell said, the pace of his cancer had frightened him enough that he concluded a donor transplant was his only hope of survival. He went through with the procedure in January 2025. In June of that year, he announced he was "completely in remission" — the first time since his 2013 diagnosis that he described himself as "100 percent clean" (NY Post, 2025).
That remission did not hold. Campbell told YSKL that the January 2025 transplant did not succeed and the cancer came back. He said he will likely need another donor transplant within a few years, using a different donor this time (Rolling Stone, 2026).
Despite the recurrence, Campbell said the news will not slow him down. He continues to perform with Def Leppard and with his other band, the Last in Line, and is also active in rally driving.
Campbell, who joined Def Leppard in 1992 to replace guitarist Steve Clark following Clark's death the previous year, has been with the band for over three decades. Def Leppard remain one of the most consistently touring acts in rock, and Campbell has continued to perform through much of his treatment history.
For fans, the practical signal is that Campbell intends to stay on the road and on stage. His account of the road ahead — a second transplant likely needed, no fixed date, a different donor — is sobering, but he framed it as a treatment step he expects to face rather than a reason to step away from music.
