Foo Fighters To Play Madison Square Garden’s First Post-Pandemic Concert

Noam Galai / Getty Images – Madison Square Grohlden
Foo Fighters perform at New York City’s Madison Square Garden on July 16, 2018. The band will return to the vaunted arena – marking the venue’s first concert since March 10, 2020 – on June 20.

This is a call to all New York music fans: Foo Fighters will play the first concert at iconic Big Apple arena Madison Square Garden since the coronavirus pandemic began later this month, the rock mainstays announced Tuesday.

Foo Fighters will take the Madison Square Garden stage on June 20, marking the venue’s first show since March 10, 2020, when an all-star group featuring Warren Haynes, Derek Trucks, Oteil Burbridge and others paid tribute to the Allman Brothers Band.

“We’ve been waiting for this day for over a year,” said Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl in a statement. “And Madison Square Garden is going to feel that HARD. New York, get ready for a long ass night of screaming our heads off together to 26 years of Foos.”

Courtesy Madison Square Garden Entertainment – Big MSG
Music returns to Madison Square Garden on June 20, when the venue will host Foo Fighters.

The Garden’s first concert in more than 460 days will host a full-capacity audience of vaccinated fans. The event follows several New York Knicks basketball games held at the arena, including three playoff games in late May and early June that each hosted approximately 15,000 fans.

“The Garden is ready to rock,” said MSG Entertainment executive chairman and CEO James Dolan in a statement. “We’ve been waiting for this moment for 15 months and are excited to finally welcome a packed house of roaring, fully-vaccinated Foo Fighters fans to Madison Square Garden.”

Foo Fighters have sold out the Garden four times, in 2008, 2011 and twice over in 2018. The band’s most recent shows at the arena, July 16 and July 17, 2018, sold a total of 30,503 tickets and grossed $2.75 million. In 2018, Foo Fighters grossed $87.3 million globally, landing at No. 14 on Pollstar‘s year-end worldwide touring chart.

Prior to the pandemic, Foo Fighters announced “The Van Tour 2020,” which was to honor the band’s 25th anniversary but was nixed due to the pandemic. Earlier this month, the group announced six cheekily named dates for its 26th anniversary for late July and early August, with promises of “a crapload more” to come. Foo Fighters’ summer itinerary also currently includes headlining slots at Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo and BottleRock.

This year has already been a major one for Foo Fighters, which released their 10th studio album Medicine at Midnight in February and were inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame – in their first year of eligibility – in May.

For its part, MSG Entertainment has been busy in recent weeks, announcing the post-pandemic reopenings of other hallowed properties, including Radio City Music Hall and the Beacon Theatre. Both will host full-capacity, vaccinated audiences later this month, the former with Tribeca Film Festival’s closing event and the latter with two solo shows by Phish’s Trey Anastasio.

Madison Square Garden has several other concerts on the books for the coming months, including Eagles (Aug. 22 and Aug. 24), Maluma (Oct. 1), Chris Stapleton (Oct. 8), Billy Joel (Nov. 5), Luke Combs (Nov. 29-30) and Genesis (Dec. 5-6).

Scores of other New York City summer and fall events have been announced, including Governors Ball, which returns in September. News broke Monday of a Central Park “mega-concert” orchestrated by Mayor Bill De Blasio and Clive Davis and slated for August to celebrate the pandemic’s end. Also on Monday, Bruce Springsteen announced the return of “Springsteen On Broadway” for later this month.

Nearly half of the city’s population of 8.3 million (3.7 million) is fully vaccinated, and its 7-day daily average of new COVID-19 cases is now its lowest since mid-March 2020.

Tickets for Foo Fighters’ June 20 Madison Square Garden concert go on sale on June 11 at 10 a.m. ET.