Review: Guns N’ Roses 2026 World Tour

Story by @GIJoeRepairShop

On August 12, 2026, I visited MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey to experience Guns N’ Roses 2026 World Tour. You might expect a sexagenarian hair band to play for an hour or an hour and a half, bow, and then leave the stage for some rest. But, no one would ever expect that of Guns N’ Roses.

The set started with a high-energy rendition of “Welcome to the Jungle” (the first song from their first album) and never looked back. Over the course of more than three hours, Guns N’ Roses played twenty-eight (twenty-eight!) songs and one extended guitar solo from Slash. I was lucky enough to have floor seats for this concert, at about the 50-yard line of MetLife Stadium. This meant that a lot of the concert was spent standing. However, after about two hours, the audience themselves started to sit down out of exhaustion, while Guns N’ Roses showed no signs of tiring or slowing down in the least.

The set list covered the entire range of their careers. There were a lot of old favorites from “Appetite for Destruction,” a few songs from “GNR Lies,” a few songs from “Use Your Illusion I and II,” as well as new songs, such as “Atlas” and “Nothin’.” This tour is the first opportunity to hear some of these brand-new songs live. The November Rain trilogy made an appearance with the songs “November Rain,” and “Estranged.” These gave Axl Rose an opportunity to sit down and impress the audience with his piano skills.

Roughly midway through the show, Guns N’ Roses performed “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.” This is the same song that they performed last year at the Ozzy Osbourne tribute concert in Birmingham, England. Since that concert, the Black Sabbath song has been a regular feature of their sets on this tour. At the conclusion of this song, a graphic appeared honoring Ozzy Osbourne. The set also featured some pleasant surprises. There was “Slither” by Velvet Resolver, followed by “Chinese Democracy.” These two songs harken back to a time when Slash and Duff McKagan were making music separately from Axl.

Finally, the concert ended with the high-energy ballads, “Night Train” and “Paradise City.” It’s clear that this is not a nostalgia tour. This is Guns N’ Roses doing what they’ve always done, with as much energy as they can muster. Not only is the music as good as ever, the passion with which its delivered is what’s truly impressive.

(All images are property of GIJoeRepairShop.)