Metallica have booked a 2027 North American stadium run with Limp Bizkit and Avatar supporting — twelve cities, eleven in the United States and one in Canada, from May 8 to June 19. Tickets go on sale September 25 at 10am local time. It picks up after the band’s twenty-four-show Sphere residency in Las Vegas wraps in March, and the venue list is the most interesting thing about it: there’s no Los Angeles, no New York and no Chicago, and five of the twelve are college football stadiums.
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Tickets: September 25
Onsale is Friday, September 25 at 10am local time, with various presales running beforehand. Ticketing goes through Metallica’s own site.
Twelve shows across a continent, and several of them in markets that have never had a stadium tour of this size, which is going to make a few of these considerably harder to get into than the city size would suggest.
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Metallica 2027 North American M72 tour dates
With Limp Bizkit and Avatar on all dates.
May 8 — Vancouver, BC @ BC Place
May 13 — San Diego, CA @ Snapdragon Stadium
May 18 — El Paso, TX @ Sun Bowl
May 22 — San Antonio, TX @ Alamodome
May 26 — Fayetteville, AR @ Razorback Stadium
May 29 — Kansas City, MO @ Arrowhead Stadium
June 2 — Raleigh, NC @ Carter-Finley Stadium
June 5 — Indianapolis, IN @ Lucas Oil Stadium
June 8 — Buffalo, NY @ Highmark Stadium
June 12 — Madison, WI @ Camp Randall Stadium
June 15 — Cleveland, OH @ Huntington Bank Field
June 19 — Salt Lake City, UT @ Rice-Eccles Stadium
Now look at that list again
This is the part that matters, and it’s the part everyone else will scroll past.
There is no Los Angeles. No New York. No Chicago. No Dallas, no Atlanta, no Philadelphia, no Boston, no Seattle, no Miami.
What there is instead: El Paso. Fayetteville, Arkansas. Madison, Wisconsin. Raleigh. Salt Lake City. Buffalo.
And five of the twelve venues are college football stadiums — the Sun Bowl at UTEP, Razorback Stadium in Arkansas, Carter-Finley at NC State, Camp Randall in Wisconsin and Rice-Eccles in Utah.
That is not how stadium tours are routed. Stadium tours go to the ten biggest metros and stop, because that’s where the population is and where the promoters are comfortable.
Metallica have already done that. M72 has been running since 2023 and it has hit every major North American market, most of them twice, with the two-night no-repeat-setlist format. There is nobody left to sell to in Los Angeles who hasn’t already had two chances.
So the 2027 leg goes somewhere else entirely — to the cities that get arena tours at best and have never had a band of this size turn up with a stadium production. Fayetteville, Arkansas has a metro population under 600,000. It’s about to host Metallica, Limp Bizkit and Avatar in a stadium that holds more than 70,000.
If you live in one of these twelve places, this is probably the biggest concert your city will host this decade. That’s a genuinely different kind of tour announcement, and it’s the reason to pay attention to this one rather than the eighth M72 leg in a row.
The staging: in the round, at the 50
Worth explaining for anyone who hasn’t seen an M72 show.
The tour is advertised as “in the round at the 50 yard line” — the band plays on a circular stage in the middle of the field, with the audience surrounding them on all sides and the ring of walkways they’ve been using for three years.
On a football field that means the stage sits at the centre circle rather than at one end, which changes the maths of the venue completely. There’s no back of the room and no side sightlines, and capacity goes up because you’re selling the entire bowl rather than three-quarters of it.
It’s also why this routing works in a 60,000-seat college stadium. A conventional end-stage setup in a venue that size leaves a lot of unsellable seats. In the round, there aren’t any.
Limp Bizkit opening is a bigger deal than it looks
Take a second on this pairing, because if you’d suggested it ten years ago people would have laughed.
Limp Bizkit have had one of the strangest and most complete resurrections in modern music — from industry punchline to a band who genuinely cannot be ignored on a festival bill, driven by a younger audience who arrived at them with no memory of the backlash and simply found them entertaining.
Now they’re opening North American stadiums for Metallica. That’s the last step in a rehabilitation nobody saw coming, and it’s the kind of booking that only happens when a band is demonstrably selling tickets rather than trading on nostalgia.
If you want to work through how they got here, we’ve ranked the whole Limp Bizkit discography — and they sit right at the centre of the nu-metal story.
Avatar are the other half of it and they’ve earned this one directly. Metallica publicly thanked the Swedish band for raising the bar while supporting them earlier in the M72 run, which is not something Metallica are in the habit of saying about opening acts. They got asked back on merit.
What Metallica are doing between now and then
The 2027 dates sit inside a genuinely unusual eighteen months.
The Sphere residency starts October 1. Twenty-four shows in Las Vegas under the Life Burns Faster banner, running through to March 13, 2027 — the most visually ambitious venue ever built, and a residency long enough to be a job rather than a run.
Before that, two arena shows in November — both at Mohegan Sun Arena in Connecticut, which for this band is now an unusually small room. Suicidal Tendencies open November 19 and Spiritbox open November 21. Those are the only non-Sphere US dates of 2026.
Then a break of nearly two months after the Sphere finishes, and out into the stadiums in May.
All of it still in support of 72 Seasons, which came out in 2023 — a fourth year of touring one album, which tells you the show has long since stopped being about the record.
The contrast worth noticing
Two days ago, Oasis announced their 2027 tour: thirty-six shows, eleven nights in Manchester alone, and two American cities for the entire United States.
Metallica have just announced eleven.
Same month, same continent, two of the biggest touring acts on earth, and completely opposite conclusions about what America is worth. Oasis looked at the numbers and decided six shows was right. Metallica looked at the same country and decided to go to El Paso and Fayetteville.
Neither is wrong. They’re just different businesses — one built on scarcity and a ballot, the other on turning up in your town with a stage in the middle of the field.
Where Metallica are, forty-three years in
Eleven studio albums, a catalogue that is still the most argued-over in the genre, and a touring operation that has outgrown the normal rules of the business.
The current lineup is James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett and Robert Trujillo. The band’s fingerprints are on everything thrash became, and M72 has been running for so long that it’s now simply how Metallica exist.
If you’re mapping out the next two years of live music, our touring guide has the wider picture.
TL;DR
- Metallica have announced twelve North American stadium dates for 2027, running May 8 to June 19 as a continuation of the M72 tour.
- Limp Bizkit and Avatar support on all dates.
- Tickets go on sale Friday, September 25 at 10am local time, with presales beforehand.
- Eleven US cities and one Canadian — and the list skips Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Boston entirely.
- Five of the twelve venues are college football stadiums: the Sun Bowl, Razorback Stadium, Carter-Finley, Camp Randall and Rice-Eccles.
- The staging is “in the round at the 50 yard line” — a circular stage at the centre of the field rather than an end-stage setup.
- It follows the twenty-four-show Sphere residency in Las Vegas, which runs October 1 to March 13.
- Metallica’s only other non-Sphere US shows are two November arena dates at Mohegan Sun in Connecticut, with Suicidal Tendencies opening the 19th and Spiritbox the 21st.
FAQ
What are Metallica’s 2027 tour dates?
Twelve North American stadium shows: May 8 Vancouver (BC Place), May 13 San Diego (Snapdragon Stadium), May 18 El Paso (Sun Bowl), May 22 San Antonio (Alamodome), May 26 Fayetteville (Razorback Stadium), May 29 Kansas City (Arrowhead Stadium), June 2 Raleigh (Carter-Finley Stadium), June 5 Indianapolis (Lucas Oil Stadium), June 8 Buffalo (Highmark Stadium), June 12 Madison (Camp Randall Stadium), June 15 Cleveland (Huntington Bank Field) and June 19 Salt Lake City (Rice-Eccles Stadium).
Who is opening for Metallica in 2027?
Limp Bizkit and Avatar appear on all twelve dates. Metallica publicly credited Avatar with raising the bar while supporting them on an earlier M72 leg.
When do Metallica 2027 tickets go on sale?
Friday, September 25, 2026 at 10am local time, with various presales running beforehand. Ticketing information is available through Metallica’s official website.
Is Metallica playing Los Angeles, New York or Chicago in 2027?
No. The twelve-city run skips all three, along with Dallas, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Boston. Metallica have played the major North American markets repeatedly across three years of M72 touring, and the 2027 leg targets secondary markets instead — including five college football stadiums.
What is Metallica’s Sphere residency?
A twenty-four-show run at the Sphere in Las Vegas under the Life Burns Faster banner, beginning October 1, 2026 and concluding March 13, 2027. The 2027 stadium dates follow after a break of roughly two months.
Twelve cities, and Fayetteville, Arkansas is getting a Metallica stadium show. Is yours on the list, or did they skip you again? Tell me below. And keep it locked on the Loaded Radio stream — follow Loaded Radio for daily rock and metal news.
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