By Chris Willman
Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic
For anyone who hoped that the Eras Tour might get an extension into its third calendar year with added dates in 2025, Taylor Swift has disabused them of that notion, affirming that her global trek really will come to a close with its currently scheduled final dates in North America in December of this year.
Swift made the proclamation while performing the 100th date of the tour on the first night of a weekend engagement in Liverpool on Thursday.
“You know, this is actually the 100th show of the show,” she declared, a number already well known to most Swifties on hand. The singer allowed that reaching the triple-digit point 15 months into the tour “blows my mind. That doesn’t feel like a real statistic to me, because this has definitely been the most exhausting, all-encompassing, but most joyful, most rewarding, most wonderful thing that has ever happened in my life.”
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She noted that the ultimate finiteness of the tour was just sinking in, even though she has six months to go on it. Celebrating the 100th show, she said, “for me means this is the very first time I’ve ever acknowledged to myself and admitted that this tour is gonna end in December. Like, that’s it.
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“And that feels like so far away from now,” she added. “But then again, it feels like we just played our first show on this tour. Because you have made this so much fun for us that we wanted to do a hundred shows, 150-something shows that we have on the whole tour.
“And I think that this tour has really become my entire life. Like, it’s taken over everything. I think I once had hobbies, but I don’t know what they were anymore. Because all I do when I’m not on stage is like sit at home and try to think of clever acoustic song mashups and think about what you might want to hear. So when I’m not on the stage, I’m dreaming about being back on the stage with you guys. And you have done so much to be with us. You’vee made plans so far in advance. You planned what you were gonna wear, you memorized lyrics, you got yourselves here, you figured out parking, you figured out transportation. … And just know that I appreciate every single ounce of effort that you put in to be with us, (as) this tour reaches triple digits of of shows.”
Swift may be exaggerating that the tour has consumed her entire attention since it began in Arizona in March 2023, as she did put out an all-new 31-song album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” in April that is believed to have been mostly or entirely recorded during her breaks from the road. The album is expected to enjoy an eighth week atop the Billboard 200 when the next chart results are announced on Sunday. She has also released two deluxe re-recordings, “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)” and “1989 (Taylor’s Version),” since the tour commenced, as well as the $261 million-grossing “Eras Tour” film.
Although Swift’s camp has not released any box office grosses from the tour, industry experts believe the total gross will surpass $2 billion by the time it wraps up in December. The closest runner-up will remain Elton John’s “Farewell Yellow Brick Road,” which grossed $939 million over a five-year span.
Swift’s European tour will wrap up Aug. 20 with the second of two runs in London’s Wembley Stadium. From there, she is scheduled to take time off from the road before returning to U.S. stadiums in November for the first time since late 2023, doing shows in just three U.S. cities — Miami, Indianapolis and New Orleans — before the tour concludes in late November and early December with six shows in Toronto and three in Vancouver. The last date is scheduled in the latter Canadian city for Dec. 8.
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