Why Have Concert Tickets Gotten So Expensive?
A wave of tour cancellations. Ticket website crashes. Iran war fuel surges. Fans going into debt to attend festivals. Welcome to the misery that is live music in 2026.
Post Malone, Meghan Trainor, and the Pussycat Dolls all delayed or canceled their 2026 tours. Some industry experts think “blue dot fever” is to blame. (Christopher Polk / Billboard via Getty Images)
Anyone who’s recently bought concert tickets knows what a miserable and expensive process it’s become.
Paying anything close to a reasonable price often requires scouting social media and news sites for tour announcements. As the sale date approaches, fans have taken to opening new credit cards or desperately combing through Reddit posts for presale codes — only to miss out because they showed up a few minutes late or got bumped to the back of the queue by a site glitch.
In the end, concertgoers are often forced to pay far above face value on the secondary market. The cost of going live has gotten so out of hand that a 2025 Cash App study found over half of Gen Z has gone into debt to fund concert expenses.
This article is for subscribers only. Please login or subscribe to access our full archives and beautiful print and digital magazine starting at just $3 a month.