Who Is Opening for Metallica on the 2027 M72 Tour?

Limp Bizkit and Avatar open every date on Metallica's 2027 North American M72 run. There are no city-by-city swaps and no rotating pairs: the same two support acts play all 12 stadium shows, from Vancouver on May 8 through Salt Lake City on June 19.

Metallica announced the leg on Wednesday, September 16, 2026, and confirmed the support lineup in the announcement itself. General on-sale is Friday, September 25, 2026 at 10 a.m. local time. If you are reading this on September 22, the fan club presale has already run and the Citi and Verizon presales are live through September 24.

The Big Change: No Repeat Weekends Are Gone

This matters more than the opener question for anyone who has bought an M72 ticket before. Every previous leg of this tour was built around the two-night No Repeat Weekend: Metallica played a city twice, never repeated a song across the two nights, and brought a different pair of openers each evening. That is why two-day passes existed for nearly every M72 city.

The 2027 North American leg drops that format entirely. Each of the 12 cities gets one show, one setlist, and one bill. There is no second night to buy, and no reason to compare Night One and Night Two openers, because Limp Bizkit and Avatar play all of them.

The stage setup does carry over. Metallica is playing in the round, with the M72 stage at the 50-yard line and the audience wrapped all the way around it, a detail confirmed by both NC State and Wisconsin in their own announcements.

The Openers

Limp Bizkit is the headline of the support bill and the reason this announcement traveled outside metal press. Fred Durst's band shared a stadium bill with Metallica once before, on the 2003 Summer Sanitarium Tour alongside Linkin Park, Deftones, and Mudvayne. That is 24 years between pairings. Limp Bizkit spent the 2020s on an unlikely festival resurgence, and a nu-metal set in a football stadium at dusk in front of a Metallica crowd is a genuinely strange, genuinely commercial booking.

Avatar opens the show. The Swedish band supported Metallica on the 2026 European stadium leg, which ended in July, and earned an unusual public endorsement from the headliners afterward: Metallica posted that "master of ceremonies Johannes and the crazy Swedes from Avatar brought something completely new to the #M72 stage." Frontman Johannes Eckerström runs the set like a ringmaster, which is why he tends to survive the brutal opening slot on a stadium bill. Getting invited back for a second continent is the clearest signal of how that European run went.

Neither act is billed as a co-headliner. This is a standard three-band stadium bill with Metallica playing the long set.

Every 2027 Date and Opener

Twelve dates, May 8 through June 19. The announcement frames these as a dozen cities the tour has not previously played on its North American legs.

Date	City	Venue	Openers
Sat, May 8	Vancouver, BC	BC Place	Limp Bizkit, Avatar
Thu, May 13	San Diego, CA	Snapdragon Stadium	Limp Bizkit, Avatar
Tue, May 18	El Paso, TX	Sun Bowl Stadium	Limp Bizkit, Avatar
Sat, May 22	San Antonio, TX	Alamodome	Limp Bizkit, Avatar
Wed, May 26	Fayetteville, AR	Razorback Stadium	Limp Bizkit, Avatar
Sat, May 29	Kansas City, MO	Arrowhead Stadium	Limp Bizkit, Avatar
Wed, Jun 2	Raleigh, NC	Carter-Finley Stadium	Limp Bizkit, Avatar
Sat, Jun 5	Indianapolis, IN	Lucas Oil Stadium	Limp Bizkit, Avatar
Tue, Jun 8	Buffalo, NY	Highmark Stadium	Limp Bizkit, Avatar
Sat, Jun 12	Madison, WI	Camp Randall Stadium	Limp Bizkit, Avatar
Tue, Jun 15	Cleveland, OH	Huntington Bank Field	Limp Bizkit, Avatar
Sat, Jun 19	Salt Lake City, UT	Rice-Eccles Stadium	Limp Bizkit, Avatar

The routing is unusual for a band this size. There is no New York, no Los Angeles, no Chicago, no Dallas, and only one Canadian date. Instead the itinerary leans on college football stadiums (Razorback, Carter-Finley, Camp Randall, Sun Bowl, Rice-Eccles) and secondary NFL markets. Six of the 12 shows are Saturdays, with midweek dates filling the gaps between them.

The Buffalo Question

Metallica's June 8 date is at the Buffalo Bills' new Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park, and it lands 11 days before Kenny Chesney's June 19 show at the same building. The Bills announced Chesney's date on September 15 as the first concert at the new stadium, and Buffalo outlets have kept using that description since. Metallica's date, announced the next day, is earlier on the calendar. Neither camp has publicly sorted out the billing, so treat "first concert at the new Highmark" as unsettled rather than decided.

Tickets and On-Sale

Window	Date	Status
Fan club presale (Legacy and Fifth members)	Mon, Sep 21, 10 a.m. local	Closed
Citi cardmember presale	Tue, Sep 22 to Thu, Sep 24	Open now
Verizon presale (US shows)	Tue, Sep 22 to Thu, Sep 24	Open now
Local and venue presales	Thu, Sep 24, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. local	Upcoming
General on-sale	Fri, Sep 25, 10 a.m. local	Upcoming

Event pages are live on Ticketmaster's Metallica artist page and on SeatGeek. A portion of proceeds from every ticket goes to local charities through the band's All Within My Hands foundation, which is standard practice on M72 dates.

Because there is no second night in any city, the usual M72 pressure valve is gone. On a No Repeat Weekend, demand splits across two shows. Here it does not, and a stadium like Snapdragon or Camp Randall is a smaller room than the ones Metallica played in Europe this summer. Expect the September 25 sale to move quickly in the college towns.

Where This Sits in the M72 Run

M72 has been going since April 2023 in support of 72 Seasons, which makes 2027 its fifth calendar year. Before this leg starts, Metallica has the Las Vegas Sphere residency to finish: that run opened October 1, 2026 and continues into March 2027, with no opening act and two alternating setlists built around the venue's wraparound screen. The stadium leg picks up roughly two months after Sphere wraps.

For the 2026 European and Mohegan Sun openers, including the Pantera, Gojira, and Knocked Loose rotations, see our Metallica 2026 opener guide. More heavy tours are on our metal tour dates page.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is opening for Metallica in 2027?

Limp Bizkit and Avatar open all 12 North American dates. The lineup does not change city to city.

Are there No Repeat Weekends on the 2027 tour?

No. Every city on this leg gets a single show. The two-night, no-repeated-songs format used on earlier M72 legs is not part of the 2027 North American run, and there are no two-day passes.

When do Metallica 2027 tickets go on sale?

General on-sale is Friday, September 25, 2026 at 10 a.m. local time. Fan club presales ran September 21, and Citi, Verizon, and local presales run September 22 through 24.

Have Limp Bizkit and Metallica toured together before?

Yes, once. Both bands were on the 2003 Summer Sanitarium Tour, along with Linkin Park, Deftones, and Mudvayne. The 2027 run is their first shared tour since.

Is Metallica playing New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago in 2027?

Not on this leg. The announced itinerary covers Vancouver, San Diego, El Paso, San Antonio, Fayetteville, Kansas City, Raleigh, Indianapolis, Buffalo, Madison, Cleveland, and Salt Lake City. No additional North American dates have been announced.

Does Avatar play every date?

Yes. Avatar opens all 12 shows, and Limp Bizkit plays directly before Metallica.