Billy Strings has confirmed his fall 2026 US tour, a 19-show run starting September 18 at Ball Arena in Denver and closing December 11 at Dickies Arena in Fort Worth, Texas.
Tickets for the arena dates go on sale Friday, April 3 at 10 a.m. local time. The artist pre-sale runs Wednesday, April 1 at 10 a.m. local time through billystrings.com.
The announcement follows months of anticipation. Strings first teased the fall routing in February by posting a page from a spiral notebook on social media, his signature method of leaking upcoming dates without yet confirming venues or on-sale details.
That notebook page has now been fully resolved into confirmed venues and a ticketing structure that includes something beyond the standard arena run. Special theater shows in three cities available only to fans who first purchase a ticket to that city’s corresponding arena date.
Where Is Billy Strings Playing?
The fall tour opens in Denver with two arena nights at Ball Arena on September 18 and 19, followed by a special theater performance at the Paramount Theatre on September 20.
From there the tour heads west. Los Angeles gets a theater show at the Orpheum Theatre on September 25 and an arena date at the Kia Forum in Inglewood on September 26.
San Diego follows on September 28 at Pechanga Arena, then Oakland gets two nights on October 2 and 3 before the tour continues up the West Coast to Eugene, Oregon on October 6 at Matthew Knight Arena and Everett, Washington on October 9 and 10 at Angel of the Winds Arena.
After a two-week break, the tour resumes in Huntsville, Alabama at the Orion Amphitheater on October 23 and 24, then travels to Baltimore’s CFG Bank Arena for what Strings is calling his third consecutive Halloween weekend run in the city on October 30 and 31.
Following a five-week gap, the tour picks back up in New Orleans with a special theater show at the Saenger Theatre on December 4 and an arena date at Smoothie King Center on December 5, then finishes in Sugar Land, Texas on December 9 and Fort Worth at Dickies Arena on December 11.
A final date on December 12 was listed without a city in the original notebook leak and has not yet been confirmed.
For the theater shows in Denver, Los Angeles, and New Orleans, there is a lottery system.
Fans must purchase a ticket to one of that city’s arena dates to become eligible for the chance to buy theater tickets. Eligibility for the ticket request period ends April 6 at 11:59 p.m. local time.
Who Is Billy Strings?
William Lee Apostol was born October 3, 1992, in Lansing, Michigan. He goes by Billy Strings. His biological father died of a heroin overdose when he was two years old.
His mother remarried Terry Barber, an accomplished amateur bluegrass musician who Strings considers his father and who is the reason he plays the music he plays.
The family moved from Michigan to Morehead, Kentucky, and then back to Muir, Michigan. While still a preteen, his parents became addicted to methamphetamine. Strings left home at thirteen.
He went through his own period of hard drug use before stopping. His stepfather kept teaching him to play.
He started getting paid to play in 2012 when mandolin player Don Julin brought him in for a gig, and the two worked together for four years. He signed to Rounder Records in 2019 and released his album Home that September.
It hit number one on the Billboard Bluegrass Albums chart and won the Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards in 2021, the first of what has now become three Grammy wins.
Strings and his band, Billy Failing on banjo, Royal Masat on bass, Jarrod Walker on mandolin, and Alex Hargreaves on fiddle, who became a permanent member during a show in Baltimore on July 3, 2022, have spent the years since expanding what a bluegrass band can do in terms of audience size and cultural reach without abandoning what made them worth watching in the first place.
They sell out arenas. They jam for extended stretches that feel like no other live band operating in any genre. Their fans, who call themselves String Cheese follow them from city to city with the devotion usually associated with the Grateful Dead or Phish.
Highway Prayers And What 2026 Has Already Brought
Highway Prayers, Strings’ fourth studio album and his first for Reprise Records, was released September 27, 2024, and produced by Strings alongside Jon Brion, whose other credits include Fiona Apple, Mac Miller, and Aimee Mann.
The album debuted at number one on Billboard’s all-genre Top Album Sales chart, the first bluegrass album in 22 years to achieve that.
It won Best Bluegrass Album at the 68th Annual Grammy Awards on February 1, 2026, Strings’ third Grammy win overall and his second consecutive in the category, following his Live Vol. 1 win the year before.
In accepting the Grammy, Strings wrote on social media: “Thank you to all the GRAMMYS folks for naming ‘Highway Prayers’ best bluegrass album!!! And congratulations to all the nominees. It’s an honor to be recognized along with such fine musicians.”
The field he beat included Alison Krauss and Union Station, Sierra Hull, Michael Cleveland and Jason Carter, and the SteelDrivers.
Since Highway Prayers, Strings released an exclusive Apple Music Nashville Sessions EP featuring reworked versions of songs from the record.
He also released a surprise collaborative album, Live at the Legion, with guitarist Bryan Sutton. Recorded live on April 7, 2024, at Nashville’s American Legion Post 82, it features the two performing 20 traditional bluegrass and folk songs including new renditions of Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” and Doc Watson’s “Way Downtown.”
He performed a Tiny Desk Concert for NPR, a recording that will be released on vinyl as part of Record Store Day 2026 on April 18.
He performed alongside Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson. He welcomed his first child, a son born September 29, 2024, with his wife Ally Dale, a yoga instructor he met in 2014 at the Ore Dock Brewing Company in Marquette, Michigan, and married in September 2023 at the Hoxeyville Music Festival venue in Wellston, Michigan. Trey Anastasio, Les Claypool, and Bob Weir performed at the wedding.
On June 20, 2025, Strings announced that his mother Debra had died in her sleep. Just hours after learning of her death, he dedicated a show in Lexington, Kentucky to her.
Debra died of a drug overdose, the same cause that took his biological father when Strings was two years old.
What The Fall Tour Means
The Baltimore Halloween weekend run is worth noting in context. Strings first performed a Halloween run in Baltimore in 2024. He returned in 2025.
This will be his third consecutive year doing it at CFG Bank Arena. Strings played the same venue to 14,000 people during a fall 2024 tour stop, a night where, by one account, the crowd was “head banging to Ole Slewfoot” in a way that felt genuinely unprecedented for a five-piece bluegrass band.
He has since set personal indoor attendance records in Denver and continued to sell out arenas across the country.
The spring and summer 2026 tour is already well underway in terms of announcement, with many dates sold out.
The spring run kicks off April 2 in St. Augustine, Florida, where three consecutive nights at the St. Augustine Amphitheatre are already sold out.
The full tour runs through late August with hometown shows at the Ionia County Fairgrounds in Michigan on August 28 and 29.
The fall run adds 19 more shows to a year that is shaping up as the most extensive of Strings’ career.
For anyone trying to see him in a smaller room, the theater show lottery in Denver, Los Angeles, and New Orleans is the mechanism, but it requires buying an arena ticket first.
Tickets on sale Friday, April 3 at 10 a.m. local time at billystrings.com.
