Avatar announce Spring 2026 US headline tour

The heavy metal visionaries collectively known as AVATAR — vocalist Johannes Eckerström, guitarists Jonas Jarlsby and Tim Öhrström, bassist Henrik Sandelin, and drummer John Alfredsson — unleashed their latest masterwork Don’t Go in the Forest last year on Halloween — how fitting! Listen and get the album HERE.

Avatar then hit the road for their massive North American headline run.

And that was just the beginning of their Herculean international touring schedule.

Avatar will spend the foreseeable future (if not forever) on the road.

Now, the band announces a Spring 2026 headline tour of North America. It kicks off on April 16 in Sacramento and runs through May 20 in Hampton Beach, NH. It includes stops at Welcome to Rockville and Sonic Temple.

Fleshgod Apocalypse and Frozen Soul will serve as support.

Regarding their return to the States, Eckerström offers,

“USA. It started off innocently enough. Hiking along on a trail. Sunny. Pleasant. Safe. Then night came, and the trail slowly faded. You can’t go back, as you don’t know where you came from. You don’t even dare to turn around, as you can feel someone, or something, watching. What you were, all the way back in the warm embrace of civilization, doesn’t matter. Here. it’s just you and the trees.”

“We will be seeing you.”

Get tickets here

AVATAR ON TOUR:
“DON’T GO IN THE FOREST ’26”:
WITH FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE + FROZEN SOUL:

4/16 — Sacramento, CA — Channel 24
4/17 — Los Angeles, CA — Novo
4/19 — Tucson, AZ — Rialto Theater
4/20 — Albuquerque, NM — Revel
4/22 — San Antonio, TX — Aztec
4/23 — Oklahoma City, OK — Criterion
4/25 — Omaha, NE — Steelhouse Omaha
4/26 — Des Moines, IA — Val Air
4/28 — Lawrence, KS — Liberty Hall
4/29 — Moline, IL — The Rust Belt
4/30 — Grand Rapids, MI — GLC Live at 20 Monroe
5/1 — Milwaukee, WI — Eagles Club Stage
5/2 — Fort Wayne, IN — The Clyde
5/4 — Huntsville, AL — VBC Mars Music Hall
5/5 — Atlanta, GA — Tabernacle
5/6 — Knoxville, TN — Mill & Mine
5/7 — Myrtle Beach, SC — House of Blues
5/10 — Raleigh, NC — The Ritz
5/12 — Richmond, VA — The National
5/13 — Philadelphia, PA — Franklin Music Hall
5/15 — New York, NY — Palladium Times Square
5/16 — Buffalo, NY — Buffalo Riverworks
5/19 — Wallingford, CT — The Dome
5/20 — Hampton Beach, NH — Hampton Beach Casino

FESTIVAL DATES — 2026:
1/25—1/31 — ShipRocked
3/15 — Mexico City, MX — Vive Latino
5/9 — Daytona Beach, FL — Welcome to Rockville
5/17 — Columbus, OH — Sonic Temple
6/7 — Trondheim, NO — Trondheim Rocks
6/20 — Dessel, BE — Graspop Metal Meeting

2026 EUROPEAN HEADLINE TOUR:
2/5 — Stockholm, SE — Fållan
2/7 — Helsinki, FI — Kulttuuritalo
2/9 — Oslo, NO — Sentrum Scene
2/10 — Copenhagen, DK — Vega
2/11 — Osnabrück, DE — Die Botschaft
2/12 — Brussels, BE — A.B. [SOLD OUT] ^
2/14 — London, UK — Exhibition ^
2/15 — Manchester, UK — Academy ^
2/16 — Glasgow, UK — Barrowland ^
2/17 — Nottingham, UK — Rock City ^
2/18 — Bristol, UK — O2 Academy ^
2/20 — Amsterdam, NL — AFAS Live ^
2/21 — Esch-Sur-Alzette, LU — Rockhal ^
2/22 — Zürich, CH — Komplex ^
2/24 — Barcelona, ES — Razzmatazz ^
2/25 — Madrid, ES — La Riviera ^
2/27 — Lisbon, PT — LAV ^
2/28 — Bilbao, ES — Santana 27 ^
3/2 — Lyon, FR — Le Cube ^
3/3 — Milan, IT — Alcatraz ^
3/4 — Vienna, AT — Gasometer ^
3/5 — Munich, DE — Tonhalle ^
3/6 — Cologne, DE — E-Werk ^
3/7 — Paris, FR — Le Zenith ^
3/9 — Wiesbaden, DE — Schlachthof
3/10 — Zlin, CZ — Sports Hall Datart
3/11 — Warsaw, PL — Stodola
3/12 — Berlin, DE — Columbiahalle
3/13 — Hamburg, DE — Docks
^ Support: Witch Club Satan

SUPPORTING METALLICA — SUMMER 2026:
5/24 — Frankfurt, DE — Deutsche Bank Park
6/11 — Budapest, HU — Puskas Arena
6/19 — Dublin, IE — Aviva Stadium
7/5 — London, UK — London Stadium

As a strange light in the sky beckons you towards something forbidden, far away, you see a robed, horned ferryman, rowing across a restless sea at the end of days. Back home a strange sound rolls through your house. It comes from the basement. The news talks about a beautiful corpse, lauded for her magnificent demise on a dance floor by men who could have fixed her. You catch the last broadcast from an outpost succumbing to flames on a distant moon. Its inhabitants try to outrun their own madness. Outside there is a place you’re not allowed to go, no matter how intoxicating the gaze of the eyes among the trees.

You lay awake at night, yet you dream thousand dreams more real than any waking moment.

Strange times call for a strange band. With a life long commitment to the misfit arts, Avatar delves deep into the collective subconscious. They travel beyond the realms of flesh and far past the spiritual barriers broken in past works. No matter how many times they were warned, they keep treading deeper into the woods. There is sense to be made out of the senseless. They lay a soft gaze upon terrifying, almost shapeless inner landscapes, and they have a damn good time doing it.

Don’t go in the forest is a warning said by others, heeded as a challenge for a certain kind of freak who just can’t fight the urge to seek truth and feel alive. It is a collection of strange tunes emerging from a circus tent in a meadow in a faraway valley. You can only ever get there by accident, walking a path impossible to remember and map out. Two eyes closed, one eye open.

Formed by John Alfredsson and Jonas Jarlsby as teenagers, soon joined by Johannes Eckerström, Henrik Sandelin and Simon Andersson, Avatar started an evolution that would see a group always looking to connect what you hear with what you see. Once Andersson left and Tim Öhrström joined, they had all the ingredients to a brew so potent it would forge their names into the souls of millions. More than a band, Avatar has evolved to concept art. In order to keep going with the same drive as they had on day one, they make sure that what is made must be done. Every single time must matter more than ever before. No matter how far they get, they are sworn to remain underdogs. There is so much to do, to try. So many ways to rediscover the simple yet sublime power hidden inside an electric guitar.

It’s all about trying new things, on and off stage. Choirs, brass instruments, Moogs, piano, cellos and violas. As long as it all worships at the altar of the riff, the possibilities are as vast as the universe. Don’t go in the forest once again stretches, bends and breaks the boundaries of what Avatar is and can be by providing both the most introspective as well as their most explosive moments. It is all done in a way that can only be achieved after a lifetime in servitude to the madness where all your gathered experiences are used to be reborn. In other words, by embracing discovery as the core tenet for what they do, every new release is as fresh and exciting as their very first time in a rehearsal room.

While the studio experience is becoming a more and more powerful tool for self expression, it is on the stage where Avatar truly comes alive. Every testimonial makes the same claims in all caps. Avatar is a MUST SEE experience. Every album cycle has provided record breaking milestones. A few of the more recent ones being kicking the door in on Latin America, first with Iron Maiden, and then with sold out shows all throughout Mexico and beyond. They have also become the talk of countless festivals across Europe and the United States, being a surefire stage closer and show stealer everywhere they go, all while setting attendance record after attendance record for their headline shows. From Australia to Brazil. From Scandinavia to the Mediterranean Sea. From the Pacific Northwest to the Deep South. Everywhere they go, their unique blend of suggestive theatrics and unabashed, unapologetic good heavy metal times, they have proven that there is only one Avatar and everyone else is playing for second place. Their impact is shown with chart toppers such as “The Dirt I’m Buried In” reaching heights that are hard to imagine from a band that has stepped into the craziest era in music history, taking matters into their own hand with their own independent label, Black Waltz Records.

For centuries the circus would come to town. Now, for the first time in history, the gravitational pull of Avatar is so strong that the town is coming to the circus. A circus deep in the forest. A forbidden place. A taboo you are destined to break.