This is not a drill: Taylor Swift has announced dates for “The Eras Tour,” her first time hitting the road since 2018. She was supposed to tour in 2020 in support of her 2019 album Lover, but even Taylor Swift couldn’t stop COVID from cancelling a planned world tour.
If you count Lover, Swift has dropped four new albums—including the recent Midnights—since her last round of concerts, and that’s not counting her re-recordings of earlier albums. What I’m saying is, fans are undoubtedly ravenous to get tickets for these long-awaited shows when they go on sale on Nov. 15—and if you are one of them, you need to start strategizing right now.
When does Taylor’s tour start?
Taylor kicks off the Eras Tour on March 18, 2023 at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. From there, she will hit 19 other venues across the country, from Las Vegas, to Chicago, to Los Angeles. Here’s the full list of tour dates and locations as it stands:
Saturday, March 18: Glendale, AZ
Saturday, March 25: Las Vegas, NV
Saturday, April 1: Arlington, TX
Sunday, April 2: Arlington, TX
Friday, April 14: Tampa, FL
Saturday, April 15: Tampa, FL
Saturday, April 22: Houston, TX
Friday, April 28: Atlanta, GA
Saturday, April 29: Atlanta, GA
Friday, May 5: Nashville, TN
Saturday, May 6: Nashville, TN
Friday, May 12: Philadelphia, PA
Saturday, May 13: Philadelphia, PA
Sunday, May 14: Philadelphia, PA
Friday, May 19: Foxborough, MA
Saturday, May 20: Foxborough, MA
Sunday, May 21: Foxborough, MA
Friday, May 26: East Rutherford, NJ
Saturday, May 27: East Rutherford, NJ
Sunday, May 28: East Rutherford, NJ
Friday, June 2: Chicago, IL
Saturday, June 3: Chicago, IL
Saturday, June 1o: Detroit, MI
Saturday, June 17: Pittsburgh, PA
Saturday, June 24: Minneapolis, MN
Saturday, July 1: Cincinnati, OH
Saturday, July 8: Kansas City, MO
Saturday, July 15: Denver, CO
Saturday, July 22: Seattle, WA
Sunday, July 23: Seattle, WA
Friday, July 28: Santa Clara, CA
Saturday, July 29: Santa Clara, CA
Thursday, Aug. 3: Los Angeles, CA
Friday, Aug. 4: Los Angeles, CA
Saturday, Aug. 5: Los Angeles, CA
While you might expect Taylor Swift tickets to break the bank, they’re surprisingly affordable, at least at the low end. Variety reports tickets will range from $49 to $449, while VIP packages go for $199 to $899.
How do you get tickets for the Eras Tour?
If all the buzz online has you freaked out, don’t worry: Tickets haven’t gone on sale, which means you haven’t lost your chance to attend one of Taylor’s stadium shows. At least, not yet.
Even minus the pent up pandemic-era demand, buying Taylor Swift tickets has always been less a simple transaction and more a fight. And this time, you will be competing against other Swifties who haven’t seen Taylor in concert since 2018. I wish you luck, because you’re going to need it. Here’s what you need to do to improve your odds.
Make a Ticketmaster account. If you don’t have one, open a Ticketmaster account now. Yes, you can make one at any point throughout the process, but it’s much faster to already have the account on hand. Also important: If you purchased tickets for Lover Fest, you will have preferential status during this process, which means you’ll likely have a chance to buy tickets before those who didn’t buy Lover Fest seats. In order to claim that status, though, you’ll need to sign in with the same Ticketmaster account you used for Lover Fest.
Register for the Verified Fan Presale. You have to do this. Without registering, you won’t even have access to buy tickets when they go on sale in the first round. There’s not necessarily a huge rush to register: The website claims it doesn’t matter when you toss your name into the hat, as long as you do so before Nov. 9 at 11:59 p.m. ET. If you try to register today, it might take some time to get through (the queue is long), but I imagine the process will be faster as time goes on. Or will it? Don’t wait until the evening of Nov. 9, is what I’m saying.
Choose your dates. Once you’re at the front of the queue, you’ll have an option to sign in with Ticketmaster (which is why having an account already is so important). Once signed in, enter all relevant information, including which show you’d like tickets for. You need to choose one show, but you can select up to two other backups in case your first choice doesn’t work out.
Coordinate with your fellow Swifties. If you’re trying to buy tickets with a group, combine your efforts. If you’re in an area with two accessible shows (MetLife in New Jersey, for example, is booked for both May 26 and May 27), perhaps you choose the 26th as your priority, while a friend targets the 27th. That way, you’ll increase your chances of getting into at least one show, if not both.
When you’ve finished entering all information, hit submit. Be warned: At the time of this writing, the system is glitchy. So many people are trying to register at once, you might not be able to get through. I tried registering twice before the system booted me back to the end of the queue to make me wait all over again. Remember, it shouldn’t matter when you register—as long as you do so before Nov. 10—so you should be safe trying again later.
Assuming you skirt the glitches, you’ll receive an email confirming your registration, including details on what comes next. But even if you register, there’s no guarantee you’ll get tickets. You will need to wait to see if you are selected to buy tickets. Here’s how that works.
What to do when tickets go on sale for The Eras Tour
On the evening of Monday, Nov. 14, you’ll receive an email if you’ve been selected to participate in the first round of ticket sales, and be given instructions on how to buy your tickets. You’ll also receive a text with your personal access code. Tickets go on sale Tuesday, Nov. 15 at 10 a.m. local venue time. The waiting room opens 10 minutes beforehand, so be sure to click the link by 9:50 a.m. Another caveat (there are a lot of these): Having an access code doesn’t guarantee you tickets, either—it only grants you the opportunity to buy tickets.
Once ticket sales open, you will be assigned a spot in line. If you get through, you will have the option to buy up to six tickets for whichever show you were selected for. Congratulations!
If all of that sounds like too much work, or you just like to live dangerously, Ticketmaster has also scheduled a general sale for non-verified users starting Friday, Nov. 18 at 10 a.m. Don’t rely on this option if you actually want to buy tickets. Demand is likely to be historically high for this tour (point of context: Midnights just logged the best first-week album sales since 2015). If you have trouble securing tickets during the presale, I can’t imagine how much harder it will be to snag seats during the general sale.
This article was updated on Friday, Nov. 4 to reflect additional tour dates added after the initial announcement.